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.