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.

Lyra is a piecing pattern designed by Debby Maddy. I was contacted by Kaye who has this quilt coming up quite quickly in her quilting que. She is quilting it for the shop who has plans for putting together several kits. Needless to say, we always want to do our ...

Recently Cindy sent me some beautiful photos of a quilt she completed using the 1472 FEATHER SURPISE COLLECTION. She had some questions about using the border blocks. So I took some time today for design play using the blocks in question working up options for filling large triangle spaces and ...

If you were at the Southeast Statler Retreat in Atlanta this year you may recall a request for design help on a quilt called Irish Mist. Many in the audience had suggestions but most were edge-to-edge. The customer wants custom quilting with a Celtic flavor. After much searching through my ...

It wasn't in the plan. It wasn't on the map. Scheduled for release next week but I just couldn't wait. I got so excited about the possibilities of this collection. I couldn't stop rearranging pieces and parts to make up a new wholecloth design.

What makes ...

An email with triumphant shouts of joy and a request came into my inbox yesterday afternoon. Olga played with her Feather Surprise pattern in Creative Studio but now she needs a corner block with feathers going out rather than in as they are in 1471 FEATHER SURPRISE BORDER CORNER. 

So ...

I thought I might take today to share some of the great tips I've stumbled upon while out in the cyber quilting world lately. After all, that's part of the legacy and heritage of being in this wonderful community called "quilters." Sharing the latest tip; sharing a new ...

Learning is a funny thing just by the nature of how it happens, and as Marva Collins says, "The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another." So what is this deep thinking all about, Kay, and what ever on earth does it have ...

Not much time for blogging this week as you can see. Sandwiched in between snow storms and shoveling duties, I was pretty focused on the projects in the studio.

I started the week with babysitting joy in Boston, but when I came back to the Berkshires I was ready to ...

 JOURNAL QUILT GROUP MARCH 2009: Our prompt was the word "dance" and our challenge was to use printing on fabric in some way  in the block or challenge fabric. And thus began my journey exploring and experimenting with techniques. I knew what I wanted to do; I knew what I ...

... and speaking of books, how about this funny video about the "new technology" of the Middle Ages - the invention of the book and the need for a little on-site tech help.

This week I've been experimenting and testing my options for surface design with my art quilt called Ostinato ...

Our March Design Challenge is almost finished ... just a few more days to take advantage of the $1 pattern special on 1402 Hearts A Flutter Block 2. Remember me telling you how easily it could be divided for additional design play in Creative Studio? All you have to do is ...

With the journaling on the page you can kind of get an idea of where I might be going with this project. I like brainstorming the possibilities. The exploration helps me narrow the focus of the project. But sometimes even the brainstorm is a little slow to get started.

I ...

Patterns used:

• 1402 HEARTS A FLUTTER BLOCK 2
• 1403 HEARTS A FLUTTER BLOCK 3
• 1374 TOUCHING BEADS SINGLE
• 1380 JOURNEY BLOCK 2

Creative Studio skills used:

In Repeat Mode ... concatinating, rubber stamp, circular array, rotation, and resizing.

And the bonus for today: a freebie - 1374 SINGLE TOUCHING BEAD is a ...

How are you coming with the design challenge? It's still not too late to pick up the special pricing on the challenge unit 1402 Hearts A Flutter Block 2. 

For my QLO (quilt layout) this week, I used the block unit in a classic design pattern I like to ...

"Oh, just do whatever, Kay. You know I always like what you do. Just surprise me," said Darlene, and that was the start of an adventure.

How would you quilt this quilt for Darlene?

These are the things we know:

She wants to use her 20% off cupon for an ...

Don't you just love it when faced with a quilt top that stops you in your tracks when trying to develop a quilting design plan? Any number of things can cause you to scratch your head in bewilderment. One of the most common roadblocks is an odd-shaped space. Strong ...

I love the feature called CONCATINATION included with our Creative Studio software on our Statler quilting machines. Concatinating is a design process allowing us to create unique edge-to-edge designs using several different but related quilting patterns. We can choose an order in which we would like the patterns to be ...

We all have them; we save them; we protect them in acid free paper; we shield them from sunlight and dust. We may even bring them out every year or so just to re-adjust the folds and admire them ... and then back into hiding for another long year or two ...

Some days you wake up and you know your job and what needs to done. Other days, you know what needs to be done; you've spent lots of time thinking about how to do it; you've rehearsed in your head a million times (especially at night when you ...