Cotton Sunrise: First Post

Hi out there. I'm Larissa, and this is my shiny new blog, Cotton Sunrise. I’m a maker of fabric things, and I’m very excited to get started on this journal of my projects and inspirations.

My first quilt

About a year and a half ago, I taught myself how to quilt. Before that, I’d sewn some very basic projects, like aprons, and curtains, and while I loved doing the sewing, I had a problem. I couldn’t pick out fabric. It took me hours. I simply found it way too difficult to go home with just one or two fabrics from the menagerie of delightfulness that is a fabric store. Then one day as I stood among the bolts, completely overwhelmed, it hit me: patchwork. I could buy them all! OK, not ALL, but lots. I could take them home, cut them up, and sew them back together. Eureka! So I bought a beginner quilting book, this one , and I read and studied and gathered my basic tools, and the next time I went to the fabric store I left with at least 25 different fabrics. Which is how I managed to make a scrappy quilt before I even had a fabric stash to speak of.

My second quilt, inspired by this tutorial

Later, thanks to the internet, I found out about designer fabrics, and pre-cuts, and most importantly, I learned that there is a whole virtual community of quilters and sewers out there inspiring, supporting, teaching, and learning from each other. Awesome! As a new quilter I’m still “finding my voice,” and by that, I mean I haven’t really settled on one particular style that is uniquely me. I’ve really enjoyed doing some modern, even liberated, piecing, but there are also some more traditional block styles I’m planning to try. I am certainly more drawn to bright colors and vivid patterns, but sometimes I go for a more subdued look, and recently I've even been working on a quilt top with ALL solids (which I never expected I’d like so much). I'll get my groove all figured out eventually, OK?

When it comes to sewing, patchwork is my first love, but I also enjoy making non-quilty projects too, and I find that I often need to work on things that I can start and finish quickly to get that instant gratification which is so NOT a part of quilting. So, interspersed with quilt work, I sew handbags, table-runners, and other small-ish projects.