Sunrise Quilt Studio

This week it was Hannah's turn at the quilting machine. She loves to use it but it is hard to bump me off in order for her to get in some quilting time-ha! Hannah is making a quilt for a friend for Christmas. This is an oriental fabric center with 2 borders around it. Hannah started out designing the quilt around the center oriental fabric. She chose 2 contrasting colors for the borders. I helped her cut out the fabric and she stitched the first border on - I finished it up with the outer border. Now the quilt is on the machine and Hannah has quilted the outer border after I basted the quilt for her on the machine. We needed a way to stabilize the quilt in order for her to quilt the borders first without getting a lot of excess fabric in the center of the quilt. My way to do this is to baste it on the quilting machine. If I have a quilt with blocks, I quilt around the blocks in order to stabilize the quilt. When I have a quilt with a large center such as a panel, I baste horizontal...

I've been keeping busy this week getting quilts done before deadline. I have 4 ready to deliver this weekend. In all my spare time ;) I've been working on a layout for a Snail Trail quilt. I chose the design and directions from the web. I laid out all the pieces on the floor in our bedroom and took several photos of it to help me remember exactly where each piece goes. Since every block is different, I would never remember how to piece it correctly without some kind of guide. This is a scrap quilt using up some of my stash. It amazes me that every project that I make to "use up my stash" hardly makes a dent in the stash! I am finding however, that I have less "useable pieces" in my stash now. Time to go shopping :D I am down to 2 basic colors of fabric - blues and greens. I really need to purchase more neutrals, yellows, purples, oranges, reds, etc. In my basement studio, there are a couple of pieces of plywood nailed up on the outside wall. I plan to cover ...

We went to the Runge Nature Center again today and here is what Sarah caught! This frog is on display inside the nature center for the kids to play on. We took a short walk around on the nature trails again today. I think we were a few days too late to get the fall colors at their peak, but here is a photo of one large oak tree that still had some pretty leaves on it. The weather has been very nice here. It's getting down into the 30's at night, but up into the 60's during the day. Perfect weather for nature hikes. We even saw a box turtle in the woods today. Sighting turtles is always a big hit with the girls! Here is another photo of nature we saw today. This little - uh, big guy - is actually living on a plant in our yard at the side of the house. He has been there for several weeks. Sarah checks on him every couple of days to make certain he is still there. In this photo, he seems to be enjoying his dinner!

My brother invited us to his cabin in the woods this weekend. We spent Friday night and Saturday there. The fall colors are so pretty there. We aren't getting many pretty colors here in Jefferson City. I guess it was just too dry this summer. It rained all Friday evening and through the night, but Saturday was sunny and cool. We spent all morning walking the property and enjoying the fall colors. I took plenty of photos to get ideas for landscape quilts :D I just love digital cameras where you can take as many photos as will fit in your memory card. That's a lot! And you can immediately delete those that don't turn out the way you like and then retake the photo until you get it right.

I spent all my spare time working on this mystery quilt the last few days of last week. I just had to see what it would look like. So, first here is a photo of the fabrics I chose for the quilt. The pieces are all cut out and labeled. The first 3 sets of pieces are the white fabric, then there is the black, the focus fabrick, the medium light, then the medium dark. Here is the completed quilt! I still don't have a place to photograph quilts in a verticle setting, so I had to lay the quilt on my bed to take this photo. One of these days I'll get a photo wall set up and will be able to take better photos of quilts. If you ever get the chance to do a mystery quilt, try it! I think it will be more fun that you ever imagined.

What will it be? I started the mystery quilt yesterday. I cut out all the patches and started sewing. Today I'm working on Step 3. I have one of the sets of blocks done and am working on the 2nd set. This is so much fun! It's fun to see how the pieces go together and make a block. This is a photo of the first block. The mystery quilt I'm working on is from The World Wide Quilting Page http://www.quilt.com/ It's the Summer Mystery Quilt. It has 4 steps to it and uses 5 fabrics - a focus fabric, a dark, a light background, a medium dark and a medium light. I chose fall colors instead of summery fabrics. I have white for the background, black for the dark, a dark orange for the medium dark and a lighter orange for the medium light. The focus fabric is a piece of commercial hand-dyed fabric left over from another project. Infact all of these fabrics are pieces from my stash. The 2 orange fabrics are pieces I hand-dyed myself. The others are commercial fabrics. Hopefully I...

The sampler quilt is finished! Yea! I'm so happy! The feather blocks were completed yesterday and today it took just 2 1/2 hours to complete the pieced blocks. This a such a pretty quilt. It's going to be hard to send it back to the customer-ha! Now on to a new quilt. I'll put another quilt on the machine tomorrow and see what ideas crop up in my head. I've been helping Hannah make a quilt for a friend of hers in Reeds Spring. This is an oriental quilt with dragons. Have I mentioned this before? It sounds familiar-hmmmm! Hannah gets tired of stitching the borders on the sewing machine and likes to take loooonnnngggg breaks between each border. This may take awhile to complete ;) She is fast when it comes to quilting on the longarm, though :D Last fall I took up crocheting again. I learned to crochet when I was in elementary school and have crocheted afghans off and on over the years. Last year I made scarves, hats and mittens for the girls. Paul bought me some yarn for ...