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.

They're back ... tis the season of the pomegranate once again for another year. I saw them in the grocery while shopping this afternoon and was so tempted to get one. I remember picking the seeds out of the peel and juice running down my chin as I feasted on ...

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's time for the piecing phase of my business to kick in now and I get to start with creating the quilt pattern I designed for a collection from the Northcott fabric company designed by Sunshine Cottage called Stonehenge Skins.

This yummy bundle of fabrics starts with the gorgeous ...

One of the ideas cooking in the back of my mind is to develop a art journaling project centered around the theme of houses, homes, the comfort of home, castle in the sky ... you know ... It just takes a heap of living to make a house a home. I just ...

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 ...

Dreaming of flowers during our February windy snow storm and a special request from Mitzi inspired this fun play exercise designing with Creative Studio. What better way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon than playing in your studio.

You need:

• Creative Studio ready to go starting a new project.
• 1234 ...

Have you seen the new patterns going up in the store over the last few days? I had a few minutes to play with a new wholecloth design in Creative Studio. This mockup features patterns from a new collection coming together called FEATHER SURPRISE. Individual patterns used in this mockup ...

One of the things I really enjoy about living in the Berkshires is how many more clear night skies we have than I experienced living in Oregon in the Portland metropolitan area. The reasons for this are … unlike the cloudy rainy Pacific Northwest, we are much drier even though we ...

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 ...

Did you go read the article by Matt Gartland I posted yesterday? I was so taken with this sculpture. Usually I am not that excited about sculptures but this one really spoke to me ... the beauty and the passion ... the emotions it evokes. Chalk it up to the spirit of ...

A valentine wish for the Mister and he sent me flowers. Good man :)

Some new heart designs are going up in the store over the next week ... blocks, edge-to-edge patterns ... some fun fresh new stuff you want to add to your pattern library.

 And some food for thought on the ...

Sleet, Freezing Rain, Hail or Snow

Does not matter

Hi Ho Hi Ho 

it's off to work I go

In hand ... my yummy cappuccino

I love my hand-held aerolatte for making my in-house special coffee drinks. Amazon keeps me supplied with my flavored syrups ... hazelnut being my flavor of ...

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 ...

More ideas using 1402 Hearts a Flutter Block 2 and practice with the DIVIDE PATTERN feature in Creative Studio. 

This block derivation was created by dividing the pattern as described HERE and then rotating half of the block 180 degrees. After adding a connecting p2p line and setting up the ...

There is a fine line in maintaining a balance in life whether we're talking personal, emotional, or career and our creative endeavors. Many times I find that I can get so caught up in the finished product I can easily loose sight of the process. How easy it is ...

Three new edge-to-edge patterns due to customer request and what fun patterns they are.

When Becky and I were visiting at the recent retreat at Simpsonwood in Georgia, she mentioned a quilt she is making for her son. She has been looking for a very specific edge-to-edge pattern ... he  drives ...

It's DESIGN CHALLENGE TIME ... are you a designing diva?

Time to dust off the mouse, open up Creative Studio and start playing. I've designed a new block that is easily divided so you can create and re-create until your "hearts-a-fluttering."

The challenge unit ... 1402 HEARTS A FLUTTER BLOCK ...

Just a quick glimpse into my art/journal quilt planning journal. This is a copy of the page with notes and ideas ... first impressions ... how would I transform this concept into an art quilt. I find it really helps me to come closer to making the project REAL ... making it ...

Taking it one step further ...

I've made a commitment to fit in a weekly photo-walk when planning my calendar. I find much inspiration when I take the time to slow down and be more observant of the little things normally missed in the rush of the day. Built in ...

Don't throw away those tattered and torn denims just yet. Here's a great idea for creating a frame for a favorite photo. Print the photo on your favorite photo transfer product. I like to use Printed Treasures. Gather up your embellishments and plan your stitching. I like the ...

Every summer I host a retreat for my sewing group, The Scrappy Sisters. We meet on Friday night for a "Come One, Come All" BBQ Potluck. We bring, hang, and share quilts and quilt tops from retreats from previous retreats. We have the announcement and awarding of prizes to the ...

Time is running out for the completion of my journal quilt block for this month of April. Our word this month was "freedom" and the quote:

Happiness is Freedom; Freedom is Courage.

Our technique challenge: we're to visit our art supply cupboards and find materials that would work for ...

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 ...

• The patterns and catalogs are printed
• The boxes are shipped
• The quilts are packed
• The laptop, snacks, and last minute are packed
• The airline boarding passes are printed
• Market documents are packed.

What have I forgotten? Today I take care of the personal stuff ... haircut, packing my clothes, etc. I ...

The best part about any quilting conference or convention is the getting together with old friends you haven't seen since ... well, since the last quilt show! Innovations 2008 lived up to all I hoped for as I got see old friends and make new ones. Even with a heavy ...

Today was a day of cutting, piecing, and computers. First, the cutting ... my red and white sample of TWISTING RIBBONS is hanging in my trunk show at Fabric Depot and this means I need to have another sample on hand for booth hangings in the area and regional retail shows ...

Today was a day of cutting, piecing, and computers. First, the cutting ... my red and white sample of TWISTING RIBBONS is hanging in my trunk show at Fabric Depot and this means I need to have another sample on hand for booth hangings in the area and regional retail shows ...

A sneak preview of a pattern to be published later this spring in the AQS journal American Quilter with closeups of the quilting designs from the Gossamer Collection. First you see the border design Gossamer Wings and after that Gossamer Block filling in the pieced Blossom block.

I resized Gossamer ...