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 ...

A new collection ... 1494 CELTIC ... and a new edge-to-edge  ... 1496 CATS ... don't miss out on the introductory discount price to make it easy and affordable to add these to your quilt design library.

Both came about by special request. The Celtic Collection was inspired by a quilt called Irish ...

Isn't this the prettiest sampler quilt? I love the fabrics Lynn chose for her blocks and the center medallion being set off with the jewel points of gold is perfect. Check out those multi-colored corner triangles. How absolutely perfect to pull everthing help each of the fabrics pop. 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 ...

Here it is ... one of the prettiest Christmas collections of fabric I've ever seen. You may be familiear with the Stonehenge line of fabrics from Northcott. It is a stale in their fabrics and they are the most versatile luscious texture laden fabrics I've seen in a long ...

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 ...

What a great conference we had in Atlanta during this last week. Thank you's and kudos coming your way to all the wonderful students and teachers in attendance at our Southeast Statler Retreat. An amazing wealth of knowledge and inspiration was enjoyed and shared all around, friendships made and ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Cut a strip here, sew a seam there, arrange a set of blocks into a row, apply a few borders and ... VOILA! And such was the tale with the yummy fabric bundle from Northcott. The collection is called Wellesley and includes a beautiful border stripe fabric.

I use two historic ...

What better way to celebrate the beginning of a new season than with a SALE and a NEW PATTERN! It's the start of leaaf season here in the Berkshires and inspiration abounds with a riot of color, shapes, textures and the result is a new point-to-point pattern that works ...

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 ...

NEW patterns up!

NEW catalog pages up! Be sure to go in and download the whole set for your files and customer browsing. All the pages have been updates as well as new patterns added.

I'll be continuing to add new patterns regularly over the next month and will ...

Let's start off with a shout out for the good old USA! Hooray for all those quilters out there working hard to meet the comfort needs of our service men and women and their families. This poster is designed to honor the efforts of all those who work with ...

They're here! Way last Spring during International Quilt Market 2008 here in Portland I placed an order for a line of 1930's reproduction fabrics. I have quite a stash of 30's but can never resist adding to the stash. I know how hard I look to find ...

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 ...

A week or so ago my good friend Jan Sims sent me pictures of a New York Beauty top she'd just finished and asked me if I could come up with some designs for her. And ... the Hearts Echoed Collection was born. Jan had plans for the triangles and ...

Let's face it - I'm a traditionalist at heart when it comes to my quilting. I can remember starting a one-patch charm clam shell quilt in the mid-70's. I'm not even sure where that particular UFO is any more. It may have been packed off in the ...

• 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 ...

Oh my! New grandbabies, getting very sick with a repspiratory infection, and then playing catch-up really does put one behind. But, we should be back on schedule now. So let's get to the fun stuff .. what have I been working on?

Digitizing and Designing seem to be the task ...

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 ...

What a wonderful last two days .. had lots of fun and got a little bit of work done, too. Today I tell you about the fun ... and tomorrow I'll tell you about and post pictures about the work. Just a little hint ... you'll want to be sure and ...