Welcome to Mountaintop Quilting Studio

This is where you find me exploring a variety of creative adventures mostly about but not limited to quilting. I'm a firm believer that one increases their creativity by being open to and playing with a variety of cretative endeavors ... at least that my excuse for today. Enjoy your sourjourn through my studio playroom. May you find encouragement and inspiration, and on occassion, a little pin-prick that may be thought-provoking or spark your imagination. Thank you for stopping by.

Today ... surviving the heat ... barely. Mike, bless his heart, added a window AC unit to the studio to help boost the cooling power of the larger roll-around floor unit we already had. We've never had the weather be so overwhelminly hot even during the night that we couldn't find a measure of relief sleeping outside on the deck. Just keep the fan blowing on me and I think I'll survive.

Tomorrow ... teaching in a shop with AC. Yeah! We're supposed to reach our peak of high temperatures on Wednesday and Thursday and then things should start too cool a bit. Let's keep our fingers and toes crossed.

Teaching at Pioneer Quilts here in Damascus, our class is the Star Table Mat. This block is a traditional block that's been around for many many years and was originally revived from an antique quilt. I will be showing the students how to make this block large enough to be used as a nice table mat ... about 17-18" in diameter.

The block construction features template cutting as well as rotary cutting and piecing with partial seams. It is amazing to me how quickly it goes together and what a great stash buster! This is one of those quilting projects that you could make several to have on hand as a quick gift for a friend, someone new to the neighborhood, or even get-well-quick wishes. I have made several in Christmas fabrics (trying to burn up some of the stash) so I'll be ready for those quick unexpected gift needs that seem to pop in the door during the holidays.

And, just to spark your interest a little more ... check out what it looks like made with batiks on a black background and bed quilt size. How stunning is that with the rich saturation of color you get from batiks.

Comments

• Wow Kay, I love this Star tablemat block. It is great that you made a few in different color ways so we could see how much we need this pattern! I guess I'll have to make it up. Oh thanks for the bonus pattern for Diamonds on the double. I love it too. Your gonna keep me busy. Don't burn up in the heat.
  by Neta on 02 August 2009 at 7:52 p.m.