Sunrise Quilt Studio

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.

This vintage quilt belongs to my MIL. She received the vintage blocks from another DIL and made the top. I love the yellow she chose for the border. The quilt is bright and cheery. She wanted some simple meander quilting in the background and quilting to showcase the Dresdan Plates. I think this fits the bill.

Last May I took a class with Irena Bluhm at MQS on wholecloth design. Now I've been creating wholecloth quilts for several years now, but it's always good to get someone elses take on wholecloth. You can always pick up some tips and tricks that you didn't know before. This class was no exception. Irena was teaching us not only wholecloth design, but also how to incorporate applique into a whole cloth quilt. She even had a short segment on coloring with colored pencil. I had taken that class the year before and was familiar with the technique. The quilt above is what I designed in Irena's class. Over the past few weeks I finished hand appliqueing the circles. Yesterday I started the quilting. I'm using 2 layers of batting and Glide thread in gold. Here you can see a bit more detail. These are Irena's feather patterns. Here is an typical example of my quilting design process - the design changes as I quilt :o.  The feathers in the center were my first choice...

In a few weeks I am teaching a class on thread painting to the art quilter's group in my quilt guild. So, this weekend I did a bit of experimenting with various floral patterns. This is the one I consider successful. The other 2 started with a pattern sketched from a photograph and they looked a bit rough when I finished them. They need a bit more work to be polished. Most of the thread painting that I do is done with my longarm machine on applique. The photo above is a 4x6" piece of floral fabric fused onto a piece of Peltex and thread painted on my domestic sewing machine. This will become a post card. My next test will be using Decor Bond as a stabilizer. That is what I use to stabilize my projects when thread painting with my longarm machine. I'm hoping it will also work well with the domestic machine.

This past week I continued to play around with purse patterns and my hand-dyed fabrics. The purse on the left above is a pattern I found on the 'net. The one on the right is my own creation - one that needs a bit of tweeking yet! And here is the "tweeked" version. I wanted a small purse just big enough for a cell phone, some cash, and set of keys. This one has room for a little more than that which is probably a good thing. The shoulder strap makes it a bit easier to carry, too.

I don't have a lot of time to work on my own projects much less a large quilt for my own bed. However, this past summer I decided to redecorate the master bedroom and painted the walls using the linen wall hanging as an inspiration for a color scheme. I also reupholstered my grandmothers arm chair and purchased another chair to coordinate. That chair is still waiting for a change of upholstery fabric. Below is a photo of my new quilt to coordinate with the paint color. I made a simple pieced rail fence out of 2 jelly rolls and added some batik fabrics to make 2 wide borders. It all went together quickly. The quilting in the body of the quilt is a simple overall, freehand swirl using a variegated thread from YLI. The inner border was quilted with a piano key design, and the outer border was quilted with freehand feathers.  The room is starting to come together. I need to finish the other chair and quilt the linen piece on the quilt rack. Perhaps I'll be completely fini...

With Christmas arriving in just 2 days, I've been busy finishing up a few gifts. This is a purse using my hand-dyed fabrics. It is similar to the blue bag I made a while back, but with this one I box-pleated the bottom of the bag and added 3 pockets to the lining. I also changed the front just a bit by leaving out the pleats.