Sunrise Quilt Studio

These are my new PrismaColor colored pencils. I decided to add to my collection and purchased an array of purples, 2 greens, a light blue, and a yellow ochre. I'm going to continue to work on the flower sampler from earlier this week. This purchase got me to thinking about the tools quilters use now-a-days as opposed to what my grandmother used. The tools we have access to as quilters today are endless. I think about how my Grandmother quilted with just a needle, thimble, thread and a wooden quilt frame, and using pieces of cardboard for templates and a pencil for tracing them as well as marking quilting lines on the pieced top. Wait! That's how I started out quilting! My paternal grandmother was the only other quilting family member that I knew of when I started quilting, and she died when I was 2 years old. I learned to quilt from the descriptions in the "Little House" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My first quilt was made from embroidered blocks - the kind yo...

Last week I bought 2 sets of fabric markers and finally got around to trying them out yesterday. I pulled out a Dover copyright-free coloring book and traced the pages onto a piece of white muslin with the black marker.  These are "FabricMate" markers and they work well putting down the color without bleeding. They dry fast which is good to prevent smearing. This flower was done primarily with the FabricMate markers. It gives a different look than what I was looking for, but I still like it. It's a bit more of an animated look. I added a bit of "Pentel Fabric Dye Sticks" for the yellow and some of the green. I bought these a year or so ago but haven't used them much. I reverted back to Prismacolor colored pencils for the most part. The Morning Glory and the Hibiscus both have marker for the dark blue and dark red, then are blended with colored pencil. I liked that look. The other flowers are all colored pencil - Prismacolor, Crayola, and RoseArt penc...

Here is a photo of the first quilting I did with my newly retro-fitted Gammill Classic Plus. I put some muslin on the machine and drew some borders and blocks with a water soluble pen. Once I started quilting I realized that the verticle and horizontal channel locks would do a much better job at quilting straight, parallel lines than what I could do with a ruler and pen. So, away I went! The feathers quilted up smoothly, too. It is so much easier to backtrack now that I can slow down in those places. I still need practice to get used to the way this machine quilts and moves, though. Part of the retro-fit package included the Easy Glider wheels and 4 of the new beveled wheels. They are great and quilting is much smoother on the diagonal now. The machine goes where I want it to go and I don't have to get a strangle hold on the handles to keep the machine going on the diagonal. I had the older wheels with the white writing on the sides of them and had been contemplating switching...

"Autumn Sunset" sold at Houston for AAQI for $94.79! I'm thrilled! "Vermillion Cliffs" also sold at Houston, but the selling price isn't listed yet. With the number of quilts they sold, it will take time to update their website. AAQI reports that 969 quilts (more or less) sold at Houston. This is such a great cause to be involved in. Consider making and donating a small art quilt to Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative to help raise funds for Alzheimer's research. Congratulations to Ami Simms and everyone at AAQI for a job well done!

Our last day at the beach was overcast with a few quick sprinkles. We spent as much time at the beach as we could, building sand castles, swimming, and beach combing. These are my last photos of Dauphin Island - for now. I'm sure we'll be back again some time. We're half way home and trying to adjust to views without the ocean right outside our window. Tomorrow we'll make a stop in West Plains, Missouri to pick up my newly retro-fitted Gammill Classic Plus! I'm also going to purchase the newer "Easy Glider" wheels and an open toe foot as well as a few spare parts for the machine. I have ideas for new quilts swirling around in my head and am anxious to get started on designing them. I need to try out a few of my ideas in small quilts before committing to a larger quilt. I want to enter a few quilts in MQS again this year, so I need to get started so I can work on them between customer quilts. The girls are looking forward to seeing their pets aga...

With the end of our vacation coming up quickly, we decided we had better make a trip to Mobile to see the USS Alabama since the weather was cooperating yesterday. The weather has been rainy so much of the time that we never know when we'll get drenched. DH has been to the USS Alabama a couple of times, but the girls and I have never seen it. It was quite impressive in size as well as how they are able to put an entire city in one of these ships. They have everything from a laundry, to a barber shop, to a butcher shop inside that ship. Several fighter planes are are the park grounds. I liked the painting on this one. I was surprised to see the wood deck. A view of Mobile's skyline from the gang plank. One last shot of the ocean before we leave. We'll be heading home in the morning. I think I could get used to living here permanently - if that were ever an option! At least I'll have my newly retro-fitted Gammill Classic Plus to play with when I get hom...

Yesterday morning we started out for a walk along the beach, heading towards the west end of the island. This is the end that received the most damage from Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. There are still many vacant lots on the Gulf side of the west end of the island as this photo shows. These houses are on the bay side (north side) of the island. I took this photo from the Gulf side across the vacant lots, across the Bieneville Ave., and to the houses on the Bay side of the island. Here are some of the shells that we picked up yesterday on our beach combing excursions. Last evening while we were swimming, a lot of seaweed washed up to shore. It was all along the beach. It made us wonder what had torn up the seabed. We haven't been out yet today, but it will be interesting to see if it was washed back to sea with the high tide, or if there is more. We had a thunderstorm after dark last night and today it is cloudy and looks like it will start raining again any minute. He...