my little eye

Tuesday I mailed off the second kaleidoscope quilt I've ever made. I made the first one a couple years ago and I forgot how much fun this quilt is to both construct and to look at. There are so many different things going on with the triangles in this quilt and what is so delightful is how the foreground and background change depending on how one looks at the quilt.

The quilt was commissioned by some of my best "patrons" - I love being part of a giving tradition. Friends of my 'clients' are expecting their first child. The baby is expected any day now; despite the ability to know the sex of a child ahead of time, the expectant parents chose to be surprised. I believe the palette of colors is gender neutral.... all brights and no pastels.

The quilt measures approximately 48" x 54" and combines both tying and handquilting.

Around the border are the words:

I see with my little eye my mama and papa who love me. I see with my little eye a world filled with beauty and wonder.

babies, babies, babies!!

The first completed of three baby quilts I have going on this month. I expect #2 will be finished by the end of the day today....at least I hope so and #3 soon after.

I just love this pattern - it's easy to piece and lends itself to all sorts of colorful play! I believe this quilt measures 48 x 48 - I mislaid the scrap of paper where I jotted down the exact dimensions.

The center is tied and the borders are hand quilted and of course made with 100% cotton fabric and cotton batting.

Liza making sure her new quilt is comfy!


In addition to celebrating babies this month, I've also been busy making wedding ring quilts to celebrate a couple couples' unions. I was literally on the road when I put the finishing touches on this quilt, so I didn't wasn't able to use my usual backyard backdrop for the photo of the finished quilt.

The couple's favorite colors are red and blue - I went with the smaller format for the wall-hanging which I think I favor.


By the way, I received a lovely thank you for the wedding quilt I posted last post - Kat and Jeremiah are very delighted with the quilt!

wedding rings

I am such a creature of habit - when I hear of friends getting married, I immediately want to make them a wedding ring wallhanging. Yesterday our friends Jeremiah and Kat were married and I made a the quilt which has become my signature wedding gift. This time I tweaked the layout and made it slightly smaller (26 x 33 inches) than the wallhangings I've made in the past. Truth be told, I like this smaller size better, the quilt still includes my favorite saying about families and utilizes the bride and groom's favorite colors for the 'rings.'

I put the package with the quilt on the gift table last night at the wedding. I expect the couple won't get around to seeing what they received until next week when they get back from their honeymoon in Hawaii. I hope they like it and find a place for it in their new home.

star light, star bright

It has been pretty quiet lately in terms of any posting here on the magical mouse studio blog. Truth be told since February it's been fairly quiet inside the studio too. However, that all is changing!

Thank goodness for babies and weddings - and thank goodness for the friendship star quilt block - it is a relatively quick quilt to piece and lends itself to a slew of options in terms of quilting the layers together - one can tie, hand-stitch, or, if one is skilled at machine quilting, machine quilt.

This weekend I finished a welcome to the world quilt for a new baby in my 'village' - when I asked his mom a couple months ago if she had any colors in mind for his room, she replied that she chose green, gold and burgundy. When she mentioned gold, the decision to go with a starry- themed quilt was a no brainer! The baby who received this quilt joined his family as a result of an adoption - he was a most wished for addition to the family. My friends who became his parents were wishing for a child for years and have been on an adoption list for a long time. But despite the waiting when the call came, there was no wait - when the baby that joined their family came he came with no long wait!

The quilt measures approximately 50" x 60" - typically the size for a lap quilt rather than a baby quilt; however I tend to prefer to make quilts that can grow with the child - which is also why I often bypass fabrics that are extremely juvenile. I am not skilled at machine quilting so this quilt is hand-stitched. Like most of my quilts this one includes words around the border - along with the child's name are the lines from a much loved nursery rhyme:

Star Light, Star bright,
The first star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.

black & white & re(a)d all over

Two posts on the poor neglected studio blog in one day!! What's with that!! I actually gave a sneak preview of this quilt in January on mouse medicine.

I could have saved these snaps of the second baby quilt but I thought I'd take advantage of red being the theme for Theme Thursday. It's a bit late to register as a tt player, and it probably would be too tacky to register all three of my blogs, so I'll just put this up without fanfare and if any player wanders over here so be it.


I think I'll name this quilt 'black and white and re(a)d' - the re(a)d of course referring to both the color and some of the fabric which is to be read!

flying stars

Yikes, I certainly have been neglecting this mousehole, I haven't posted anything since October! Didn't I make some sort of resolution last year to post something once a month?

My absence here does not completely reflect my absence in my physical studio - but it comes pretty close.

Since completing the huge delectable mountains project in October, I have only finished two baby quilts. Today I'll share a couple snaps of the star quilt which was picked up last weekend. My friend who ordered this quilt for her first grandchild wanted to pick up the quilt in time for the birth of the baby. Based on the predominance of pink fabrics in the quilt, it is true that everyone is expecting the baby to be a girl. Let's hope that ultrasound prediction is correct. I've been known to use pink in quilts for boys and girls - but not so much pink as this quilt has.

This is one of my favorite patterns to use for baby quilts, it lends itself to so much playfulness. This time I hand-quilted the entire top in order to secure the layers - the stitching isn't very dense but it's enough to prevent bunching and create some new shapes to follow. Around the border are stitched several stanzas from the nursery rhyme Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

The top of the quilt uses primarily batik fabrics - all 100% cotton, the back is composed of playful print of red ladybugs on a green leafy background - and bordered with black and white check fabric . The finished quilt measures 58"x50"

delectable mountains

Yesterday I finished the quilt I've been working on for the last couple months. I can't recall exactly when I started the piecing of this quilt, but according to my last post I do know exactly when I started the quilting.
As you can see, the quilt is a big one - here it is displayed on a queen sized bed. A friend commissioned the quilt for her son who is getting married on November 7th. The wedding is taking place in Mexico where the couple is currently living.

The groom's family are all flying out to attend the wedding. I thought they were leaving today so I gave myself the deadline of having the quilt finished and ready for delivery for Friday morning and for all intents and purposes I had the quilt finished as of Wednesday night - a whole day early - woo hoo!!



The bottom border was already personalized with the bride and groom's names and the date of the wedding. On Thursday evening I learned my friends aren't leaving until a few days later - which was great news as it gave me the opportunity to add an excerpt from a prayer which was on the wedding invitation.
(the picture on the right shows Stella, the studio cat, I think she was endorsing the idea of adding the extra words as this was the first time she curled up on the quilt while I was working on it - perhaps she wanted to add some of her own special magic to the mix!)

So yesterday I added these words on the side borders:

To the heavens above. To the earth that we love
To that which we are, have been, and will be

.....a nice little prayer to sleep under.

The quilt is an adaptation of the traditional quilt pattern called delectable mountains. The quilt measures approximately 88" x 98" - it is machine pieced and hand quilted the fabrics and batting are cotton.