Sunrise Quilt Studio

I am working on a hand-beaded quilt for entry at MQS. This is a photo after 3 different beading patterns. It is slow going, but it is turning out well. I can see why many quilters use hot fixed crystals instead of hand-beading - it must be faster and easier on the hands. I am having so much trouble with pain in my hands the past 2 days that I know I'm beading too many hours per day. Deadline for shipping is going to come way too fast for me so I have to keep at it.

I've been working little-by-little on the Feathered Star quilt. I decided to color the feathers to match the circles, otherwise the entire quilt would look disconnected. From a distance, there are just blobs of color from the appliqued circles and the feathers didn't stand out. Coloring the feathers with gold ink would not have been cohesive in my opinion. I tried out the different color combinations on a scrap piece and came to that conclusion. So now the feathers will stand out and coordinate with the applique circles. There is still a lot of work to do, and lots of hours to put into this quilt, so it won't be ready for MQS this year. I do have another quilt I'm working on that should be ready for entry. It will be in the "Fabric Challenge" section. I'm working on the appliques at this point, but almost done with that. I should have it on the machine to quilt later this week. Then I'll photograph it and send in the entry form. The March 18th deadli...

The latest project for "Fancy Threads", the art quilters group in my guild, was thread painting trees. Here is my completed project. The piece was machine quilted on the longarm without a backing - using only the top, batting, and a layer of Decor Bond for stabilizer. The trees were thread painted using my domestic sewing machine. I decided to use some rayon threads to give a bit of shine, and I experimented with using the zigzag stitch on my machine to do the thread painting. After ripping out the 2nd tree I stitched, the quilt looked much better. I had made the tree on the far left too wide, and the quilt was puckering. So I spent 2 hours ripping it out and started over. I like it much better now. Next month we will be making quilted postcards. This group is soooo much fun! I'm having a blast!

The quilting is complete on the applique whole cloth that I have named "Golden Feathered Star" at this point. The name may change as I continue to work on it. Yesterday, I washed out the blue soluble pen and blocked the quilt.  Today I am considering how to color the quilt. Colored pencils, or inks, and what colors and where to place them. Hmmm.....

The snow has stopped, the sun is shining now, and the snow is sparkling to the point of being blinding. Quite a change from yesterday when there were white-out conditions most of the day. This is my front porch. The snow drifts covered the stairs and landing and piled up against the door.   This is what I found at 6:30 this morning when I opened the door. Thats 30 inches of snow! There is 18" piled up against the back door, but luckily we can get out of the basement door and the garage door. My big dogs were up to their shoulders in the snow when I let them out this morning.  Look how pretty the cedar grove is, though. With temperatures due to drop below zero later today, the girls and I are going to start shoveling this morning. Hopefully we'll get some progress made. This is going to take days to clear out, though. At least the fridge is stocked and we have power!

We had a good time at the thread painting workshop on Saturday. There were 7 quilt artists in attendance and we all learned something new. This is a great group of ladies. Everyone is generous in offerring their advice and expertise in quilting, art, and machine operation. Below is the flower I worked on during our class. It is unfinished as of now. The flower below is one I completed before class. I added some gold metallic thread to the edges of the petals to give it some sparkle. This flower was also completed before class. I'm still debating on whether or not the leaves need something more. It's hard to know when to stop! This is a shot of the fabrics I am auditioning for the finished project. My plan is to cut out the flowers and leaves and make a collage of them on a background piece. I'll probably use the cream batik for the background. The purple fabric is the challenge fabric for MQS 2011. I'd like to incorporate that fabric into the quilt also. It will...

I've made some progress on the applique whole cloth quilt. The elements are all quilted using Glide thread in gold, including the motifs in the applique circles I'm McTavishing the background of the area outside of the star. I'm about 3/4 of the way done with that section. Ooops! I missed a section! I'll have to go back and get that. I'm using Sew Fine 401 - white 50 wt. thread for the background filler. I'm still looking for a background filler for inside the star. I'll also do some background filler in the applique circles in the gold, but nothing too dense. Once the quilting is complete, I'll soak out the blue pen marks, block the quilt and then add color to the motifs. I'm debating over colored pencil or ink. I'll have to do a few sample pieces before I commit. Tomorrow I am leading an art quilter's group in a thread painting class. I'm looking forward to that. It should be lots of fun.