catch up....not catsup!

oh my! can it really be that the last time I put something up on the magical mouse was august?!

it's a bit of a rhetorical question. yes, it has been since august. I haven't been completely inactive in my world of 'playing with fabric' but for all sorts of reasons I've been a tad neglectful of maintaining the studio blog.

let me try and make right.

starting with my most recent, here are photos of the last three projects I completed with wee descriptions:

the quilt above I entitled 'may the circle be unbroken' - it is a wallhanging and was made to celebrate the upcoming union of two individuals. the center panel uses traditional log cabin blocks arranged to form two interlocking circles. the text around the center panel includes the following:

Our family is a circle of love and strength. Every joy shared adds joy. Every crisis faced makes us stronger. (note: I discovered I misspelled crisis prior to turning the quilt over to anne, who will be giving the quilt as a gift, I fixed the spelling after this photo was taken- however, I could have left the misspelling alone as fitting of the culture of imperfection consciously found amongst many tribes of quilters!)

the quilt measures 36" x 46" - it is machine pieced and hand quilted. the colors of the 'circles' represent the two favorite colors of the two individuals who are being wed.

another fishy quilt!! this was made especially for lil b's sister. this quilt measures approximately 48" x 58" - it is machine pieced and hand quilted. in addition to information about the baby, around the center on three sides of the border I stitched a fragment from the nursery rhyme 'I saw a ship a sailing'

this quilt was made for a friend to give to a friend of hers to celebrate the birth of a child. the child's mother is a podiatrist - hence the flip-flop fabric. I made this quilt while my 'good camera' was in the shop and while I was 'on the road' so the photo is not staged as is the norm. unfortunately I didn't write down the measurements of the quilt - it's my typical size for a baby quilt (which means it's similar in size to the fishy quilt above). time was of the essence to complete this quilt as my friend asked me to make the quilt after the baby had been born. the center of the quilt is hand-tied and only the borders are handquilted.

theme day: wing

I made this quilt a few years ago for my friend j's daughter who was starting college far from home. a few years before this I made a wall hanging for j to celebrate her 50th birthday. j thought it would be nice if her daughter had a quilted wall hanging also to commemorate this rite of passage - leaving home and starting college. my friend is a wonderful parent and when she asked me to make a quilt for her daughter the first thing that came to mind is that saying about good parents give their children both roots and wings....

I thought wings and birds in flight was fittingly symbolic. I designed a quilt with 4 birds flying off in what I thought were the cardinal directions and the triangle border is the tradition flying geese pattern. the center is bordered with a fabric of more winged creatures - butterflies!

rainbow fish II

the rainbow fish quilt is completed and ready for delivery! it's was quite fun to create. the quilt is machine pieced and hand-stitched. the center fish panel has stitching that resembles seaweed and along the border is a little fishy song (words below).

the overall quilt measure approximately 39" by 49" - there are three different size fishes in the quilt. for this quilt the squares were 3" 2 1/2 inches and 2" and half squares cut in a manner to have a finished square that corresponds.

the size of the fish can be customized depending on your overall plan. each fish is made of one square of fabric plus 3 squares of half triangles.

detail of quilt showing a peek at the back. the baby this quilt is for will be born in the chinese year of the rat (or mouse) so the middle starry panel is surrounded by two borders - one of small happy mice and a border of black and white check fabric.

the song - which can be sung to baby to the tune of "I'm a little teapot"

I'm a little fishy
watch me swim
Here is my tail
Here is my fin
When I want to have fun with my friends
I wiggle my tail an dive right in

rainbow fish

during the summer life is so busy I don't have time to do much quilting. however I do have one fun project underway for a friend who has a friend who is expecting a baby this fall. during the interview with my friend where I try and learn a bit about the interests of the family who will be given the quilt, I found out that they were really into fish.

instead of using fabric with fish, I thought I'd make fish out of fabric. I'm calling this quilt "rainbow fish." right now I'm in the quilting stage of the project - I am currently handstitching an overlay of what I hope will appear to be seaweed over the center panel.

since this quilt will be presented to the expecting mother before the birth of her son, I won't have the particulars of name, date of birth, etc. to stitch on the quilt. instead I hope to find a nice children's rhyme or poem to stitch along the border instead. any suggestions?

right now I'm calling this quilt 'rainbow fish' - there is a very popular children's book by marc pfister entitled 'the rainbow fish' - in fact there seems to be a whole series of rainbow fish books!

the ladybug's garden

it was fun to get back into the groove of playing with fabric by making this sweet little baby quilt. although I generally choose a more gender neutral palate I had a delightful time playing with all the pinks in this quilt - which is obviously for a little girl.

this quilt is much more consistent with the typical size for a baby quilt than the baby quilts I generally make (which tend to be larger so they can 'grow' with the child). this quilt measures approximately 37 inches by 47 inches. machine pieced, the center is hand tied and the border is hand stitched. stitching on the border includes the child's name and birthday, and a fragment of a nursery rhyme is stitched along the border.

lovely little ladybug, please watch over my garden and fill it up with love.

theme day: shoes!

I've been terribly neglectful of the studio blog. of course in part it's because I really haven't been very busy in terms of quilting. however I am happy to report today I am finishing up my current project. I promise I will post pictures over the weekend. the project being finished is a baby quilt which I'm calling either "in the pink" or "ladybug's garden" and it has nothing to do with shoes so the pictures of the work and it's story will have to wait until another day.

reading portable hair dryer girl's post for theme day stimulated me to think about slippers. I am currently "between slippers" I think I will make my next pair of slippers.

I found a couple promising leads and thought I'd share theme in case anyone else is interested.

there's a review of this pattern book here along with a link on how to order the softie book - the review is positive and the pattern book seems reasonably priced. the book is published by timber lane press which has two other pattern books for making slippers.

then there's mention making of vintage scuffs on little grey bungalow's blog. I've never been to lgb before. given that I'm a self declared peacenik and 'shay' (the author of lgb) is a retired marine who expresses a love for military history, I don't know if we'd necessarily hit it off. but who knows? not all military or retired military people are aggressive and pro-war - in fact, I have some very, very close friends (not to mention family members) who are vets or currently active in the service and are anti-war and even if people are mislead and feel war or aggression is the answer I do love them anyway (who was that wise guy suggesting that we love everyone - even enemies?). anyhow, shay has some very neato stuff on her blog - most of it is retro stuff and I know I'll be going back for nibbles.

by the way shay also have links to the pattern to make these vintage scuffs. how cool is that.

orange you glad....

aside from the laughter of children and the squeak of notch's wheel* the studio has been quite for the last several weeks. however, this weekend that's all about to change. more on that later.

in the meantime the magical mouse studio would like to join in the cyberhood's celebration of the most cheerful of colors for theme thursday - I'm sure I have some more orange bits buried in my scrap boxes, but who wants to go there! not I, not I.

*notch recently joined stella as one of the animal guardians of the studio.