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 ...

Now here's a fun quilt.  (Thanks so much to Olga for sharing with us how she used Loopy Sash and 1375 LOOPY STARS. Anita's Cream Swirl is a perfect match. Great pattern selection.

(click on the photo to link to Olga's Smilebox slideshow for the full story ...

I love red and white. I love red clothes. I love red shoes. I love red dishes. I love red in my quilts. So you can imagine my excitement when I read about the exhibit held in New York City in conjunction with the American Folk Art Museum just this ...

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 just a regular day again here in the studio. Everything starts off with nice and relaxed pace. Do the stretching routine. Ahhhh, that feels good  too many tight muscles here to skip this daily habit. Got to coffee going and blueberries with yogurt sounds like a good healthy ...

I hope you're able to celebrate this day set aside just for us quilters working on your favorite projects, finishing up a UFO (an unfinished quilted object) shop-hopping with friends, taking a quilt class, or even participating in one of the many on-line National Quilting Day mystery quilt events ...

Yes, look very closely at the bottom of the photo and you will see it ... that's right, I did an inside trim. If you've been in any of my classes you'll hear me give my reasoning ... the biggest reason I can think of learning how to do ...

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 one, but two qults off the longarm quilting machine this week. The first one was pieced by my good friend Juanita. She made this comfy cozy flannel quilt for her grandsons. I used an edge-to-edge pattern that you can find in the Mountaintop Studio Store called 1375 Loopy Stars ...

FINALLY ... all the stars lined up, the calendar holes fell into place, and I was able to  go to my first quilt guild meeting in the Berkshires. There are two quilt guilds in the area with both of them holding their meetings on a Tuesday night. Makes it easy to ...

"Come said the wind to
the leaves one day,
Come o're the meadows
and we will play.
Put on your dresses
scarlet and gold,
For summer is gone
and the days grow cold."
-  A Children's Song of the 1880's

 September To-Do List:

•  change out summer dishes to ...

Wow, finally a day without contractors and electricians. They're all on vacation and I can quilt! Yeah! Look what is on the machine today, Cheryl. You've probably forgotten what your quilt looks like. I should have it off the machine, trimmed up and off in the mail to ...

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 ...

Click HERE to enlarge.

• Don't you think it strange when ... the snow is falling on the daffodils that just came out in bloom?
• Don't you think it strange when ... you see the snow falling and hear the tree frogs singing their mating calls?

And speaking of frogs ... Don ...

Only 4 more days and I get to get away with friends and sewing buddies for our annual quilting retreat organized by my good friend Barbara. They say, "a picture is worth a thousand words" so enjoy my memories from QOTL 2008 while I contiue with packing and doing all ...

It's been a busy few days on the machine ... enjoy the slide show.

Darlene's Retreat Quilt

Darlene used a holly print batik in the setting triangles and outside border making the decision in choosing an edge-to-edge pattern very easy ... Holly Berries from Anne Bright.

Ruth's quilt from ...

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 ...

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 ...

Everyone has been making note of what great quilting weather we've been having with all of our wintery blast. Much posting of finished projects and crossing items off the UFO list. But not me ... I've been creating UFO's. Now that's not to say I don't ...

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 ...

How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are generated!
I should hardly admire more if real stars fell
And lodged on my coat."
--Henry David Thoreau, 1856

Hasn't this been the strangest winter for weather here in the Pacific Northwest? Snow, rain, and then ...

Here it is the end of the second week in January and I have loved my "slow-down" time. My friend Marje of Quilt Design Northwest asked me some time back,

"Kay, when IS your slow time?"

When you have to think about what the answer might be to that question ...

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 ...