Meet Maddie

Maddie is my lovely niece who is making her first quilt. Not missing a beat (stitch), I invited her to come up for a visit to my house. I promised to take her on a field trip to The Rabbit’s Lair shop and let her pick out 16 fat quarters in honor of her having just turned 16.

Be sure to read Craft Gossip Needlework Editor Denise Felton’s review of The Rabbit’s Lair when she was also the Quilting Editor. See the review. Also be sure to check out the Rabbit’s Lair online store.

Maddie decided to come, and she, along with her mom Robin and her Aunt Charlotte, spent the entire Labor Day weekend with me. On Saturday we (including my daughter Brittany and grandchild Rowan) all piled into the ‘burb and drove to Rogers, Arkansas where The Rabbit’s Lair is located. Maddie had no trouble finding 16 fat quarters to add to her stash. She got some beauties, favoring their wonderful selection of batiks.

Saturday evening we washed, dried and ironed all of her fabrics (she’s been gathering them for months). On Sunday, Maddie began cutting the strips that would become part of her queen size quilt.

She decided to do a string quilt using the Kaleidoscope quilt tutorial from Film in the Fridge blog. But instead of using white in the middle of her blocks like Ashley did, she would use brown.

Here is one of her blocks as she stitches the strips into place.

The cousins stayed up late and by Monday Maddie had completed six blocks. Doesn’t she look happy! Bravo Maddie, your Aunt Scarlett cannot wait to see the rest.

Technorati Tags: Maddie’s first quilt, string piece, paper foundation, Aunts, cousins, fabric shopping, The Rabbit’s Lair, Rogers, Arkansas

Siren Stitchworks has cross stitch patterns that feel like old samplers (and some of them are in fact historical reproductions) even when they are modern designs. They have patriotic patterns, biscornus, pop culture patterns and more so let’s take a look.

One of the projects that caught my eye was the Mexican menagerie, a set of five Mexican folk art inspired creatures. There’s a bird, horses, dragons, alligators and cats on these designs, which you can make into tiny pillow or ornaments.

The pattern notes don’t say how many colors are used but it doesn’t look like any of them have more than five colors. It does note the smallest pattern is 59 by 59 stitches, and the largest is 82 by 68 stitches. They also only use full cross stitches.

The category with the largest number of entries (which is still only 12 as of this writing; this is a small shop) is called ornaments and smalls. It includes this menagerie and another Mexican animal collection, as well as traditional looking patterns with a twist, such as a little pattern with Yule goats, a needlebook cover that looks like a tombstone and alphabet samplers that include Greek, Latin and Hebrew.

There are also a bunch of samplers, divided into monochrome, traditional and reproduction samplers. There are some fun ones in the monochrome department, including a Titanic sampler and an aloha design with a pineapple motif. Traditional samplers include some patriotic designs (and a gorgeous folk art resist fist), as well as a really fat cat.

And the reproduction samplers include fun fonts, florals and birds like you’d expect from old sampler designs.

In addition you’ll find a few pop culture designs (mostly Game of Thrones inspired samplers for different houses), biscornus include a couple Chinese zodiac designs, and a few needle minders for sale.

Check out all the fun designs at Siren Stitchworks on Etsy.

[Photo: Siren Stitchworks]

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