Sweet River Studios

I know you've probably seen or heard of these bowls. In case you haven't, these are sewn bowls that you can microwave but they won't get hot.  You know when you microwave a bowl of oatmeal or a mug of tea and you reach in to get your stuff out and burn your fingers? Well, if you put the bowl or mug in a "microwave-a-bowl" first you won't get burned. So I decided to make some. They're really easy to make. I know a couple ladies make them for craft shows each fall and they practically walk out the door.  First of all, here's what you'll need to make these: Materials: Microwaveable 100% Cotton Batting (Pellon or Warm & Natural) 100% Cotton Fabric 100% Cotton Thread Notice how there is nothing on the list like polyester.  That's because we don't want anything to catch fire. Hot tea, good. Fire, bad. You get the idea.  You can get all of these materials at any craft store. So let's get started.  You can make these any size yo...

I've been working on the outer border for a while now and I'm about 75% done.  Out of 44 blocks I've got around 32 done so I'm getting there. I decided not to do a video of these blocks just photos. There's a lot of fabric placement and thread changes and trying to operate a camera at the same time is just begging for something bad to happen. So I decided not to risk it. Here's the border block and corners. They are the smallest blocks I've done for this quilt. The borders are 4.5'x6" and roughly 12K stitches and the corners are 4.5" square with around 9K stitches. Outer Border Corner The outer borders require some accurate piecing first.  The first piece for the corner is strips of fabrics 1 and 4. The second strip is made from fabrics 3, 1 and 4. In the top photo of the square, strip 1 is the white, brown, white and strip 2 is pink, white and brown. To make the square, stitch out your placement area. Then place strip 1, right si...

After getting my Secretariat quilt done earlier this year, I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if I could get it signed by Penny Chenery and Ron Turcotte?" If you don't know, Ms. Chenery owned Secretariat and Mr. Turcotte was the jockey who rode Secretariat in all three triple crown races and more.  So, I emailed Secretariat.com asking if it would be possible and I was told the best chances of getting the quilt signed was to attend the Secretariat Festial in Paris, Kentucky at the end of September. Who knew there was a Secretariat Festival?  Apparently, most people in Kentucky no doubt but since I live in Ohio, I had no idea. The opening of the festival was Friday, September 19 and it was in full swing on Saturday, September 20th. There was some horse exhibitions, bourbon barrel painting (it is in Bourbon County after all), auction and memorabilia signing by several jockeys such as Ron Turcotte,  Jean Cruguet, Pat Day and Steve Cauthen and others. This was our fi...