Calico Nickel Catnip Mice

This recipe for making Calico Catnip Mice for your cat or cats to enjoy is entirely original; I made it up and it is my own! It is copyrighted by being presented on this blog. You are welcome to use it to make as many as you like to use or to sell but the design is mine. Thank you for respecting that!

First, start with a 5" cotton square:

Flip it over so that the wrong side is up and fold one corner in towards the center about two thirds of the way:

Next you are going to fold the whole thing in half with the RIGHT SIDES TOGETHER.

But before you sew it, I want you to take a doubled folded hank of cut-off selvedges and add them inside the SHORT seam, so that your mouse will have a playful tail.

I used a nice generous two strands that were about 8" long when they were folded over.

 Tuck them inside with the folds being caught into the short seam after you sew around the corner.

Be sure to backstitch for strength at the pointy "nose" end where you begin stitching. Sew down to the corner and pivot and continue to stitch the tails into place. Can you see the two folds sticking out in the picture above? That is a very short seam. Be sure to backstitch that short WHOLE seam so that the tails are sewn in doubly.

Once you are done stitching, turn the mouse right side out, using a chopstitck or blunt closed scissors to push the tiny triangluar nose out all the way.

Sorry this is a different fabric, but you can see that it makes a place to fill the mouse with the catnip. I placed my dried catnip into a clean and very dry used soda bottle so that I could pour it easily. Some is going to spill but it smells nice anyway.

I put in about a generous tablespoon of catnip.

Next, center the tail's seam in the middle and sew the whole thing closed, but backstitch the whole seam for strength. Here are some extra pictures:

These are lots of fun and quick to make, just don't stress out over some spilled catnip flakes!
After you make a bunch, put them into a plastic bag to keep them fresh for six months to a year and bring them out when you need one.

Rainy Afternoons

Here we all are enjoying our drought-breaking rainy afternoons!

Matthew, frantically cramming for his college algebra final exam.

Felix, taking a break from tutoring Matthew on his math by playing for a video game badge on Pogo.

Victoria, (me), happily sewing on my Mother's Colors quilt, a strip twist from Bonnie K. Hunter.

Raven, looking on the futon for her forever-lost tennis ball.

A Mother's Day Celebration

Last night I began playing around with some absolutely yummy fabrics in colors that would have pleased my Mother if she were still alive. I was just having fun. I cut into this gorgeous tawny brown background that had peach and coral flowers that was just slightly oriental in nature. I found several lovely fabrics to go with it. Actually, I've been kinda ruminating on these colors for days, now that I think about it.

My plan was to make a small Strip Twisthttp://quiltville.blogspot.com/2005/06/strip-twist. from Bonnie K. Hunter's free pattern over on Quiltville, but to do it as a controlled scrappy plan rather than completely random lights and darks.

The more I worked on selecting fabrics and cutting them out,

the more I found myself deliberately choosing fabrics and patterns and colors that would have delighted Liz, my Mother.
I cut out lots of long 2 1/2" strips and as I sewed them together I enjoyed memories of my Mother sewing "Mother-Daughter" matching navy blue and white dresses for my sister, Suzanne and me when I was five.

I sewed and lamented the lingering death by inches due to complications of Dementia that she endured, three thousand miles from me. I would call her every day. As her brain cells turned to Swiss cheese, she was unable to figure out which end of the telephone receiver to hold to her ear unless a nurse helped her.

I guess that's why I was glad that she finally died in December of 2006. I missed her terribly but I could not cry about it. Her terrible struggle was over. She had gone home to God. All my emotions were so conflicted then.

So last night, I sewed and cut and cried. And then I realized that this is a Grief Quilt that I am working on to heal my own sense of loss. Something to comfort me. Something to celebrate the colors that gave her joy. Something to remind me of her personal journey. It is just a beginning.

Friendship Garden

Yesterday I experienced a perfect day. I got up early and went to a quilt show, The Bedford Friendship Quilt Guild's "Friendship Garden Quilt Show."
Some of the quilts were much better than mine, some worse, but all of them entertained me and captured my imagination! Here is a sampling of what I saw that made it such fun.

 There were a few vendors and the one that I enjoyed most was Sue Trask of The Quilt Patch of Bedford, NH.www.thequiltpatchnh.com She had some lovely fat quarters for $1.00 each and I scooped up ten!

 When I first saw that last little red and white quilt, I internally gasped that the points were cut off on her blocks. But when I read the legend, it said that it was her very first quilt! I am so proud of her. I was too ashamed of my first quilt to ever have displayed it anywhere. It became a dog bed.
Here are more of the beauties:

 That last quilt was all Civil War nine patches just sewn together with a common cream-toned background. It made for a magnificently understated elegance and I loved it! I'm sorry that this photograph doesn't do it justice.

This pink and purple Storm at Sea was perfectly executed!

This antique pineapple was from the 1800's and sewn with weensy 3/4" strips! Here is another antique treasure from the 1930's:

After seeing the show, I enjoyed their $4.00 box lunch of a made-to-my-order sliced turkey sandwich with mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato on a fresh sub roll which I sprinkled with salt and pepper. They included my drink, a large hot tea, potato chips, and even a homemade brownie for dessert!
As I left the show, the blessed sun came out for the first time in four days.
When I got home, there was a fabulous package of fat quarters waiting for me in my mailbox from the SewFarSewGood quilt shop,http://www.sewfarsewgoodquiltshop.com/ too! I was flying on a new fabric high!!!!! I pulled up the hill of the driveway, unloaded my loot from the car and found that there was still enough hot water on the Bunn's burner to make fresh tea. Perfect!

Mindfulness

When I was a dreamy little five-year old leaving a trail of lost wallets, purses, hats and bracelets behind me everywhere I went, it did not bother me a bit. Now that I'm almost 65 years old, I often feel like I must be losing my mind when I forget stuff or lose stuff. This lovely fabric was still in it's shipping envelope in the seat of my overflowing design chair and it was dated June 2011. I have absolutely no recollection of buying it!

I'm planning on doing something wonderful with pink and brown florals someday,so I was glad to find this and prewash it and get it on the clothesline.

The lawn out there is strewn with delicate beauty; tiny wild violets, a stray dandelion, and white clumps of quakerladies. I was told that some people call them bluettes.

I left the fabric to get it's "final rinse" in the light spring rain and as I walked in I admired the new pansies that I had planted last week.

On a more quilty note, I discovered a 6"X12" scrap of sunflower and navy gingham fabric that I had previously bonded to thick Pellon Peltex 71F. It was leftover from having made a few postcards. I did not know what to do with this stiff thick fabric but did not want to just throw it away.

Then I had a brainstorm! I cut it up into a set of eight 3" squares for coasters. My sister Suzanne actually USES coasters, so she will love them! If these were made up with pretty Christmas fabric, it would make a very quick and inexpensive gift.

The rains are very welcome to end the drought, but I sure do miss my sit-in-the-sun sessions for attitude enhancement. Here I worked on carefully pinning all the cornerstones on the sashings for "Recent Developments."

This jumbled looking mess is when it was ready to sew;

And here are three of the five rows joined! I am using a dark green pindot that is ancient, probably from the 1970's. It is cotton Concord Fabrics by Joan Kessler, but it looks great with the yellow and cream floral cornerstones.

It's coming out nicely and I like it!

Free At Last!

Yes! I truly have finished the last of the second set of Sister's Choice blocks! So I'm free to start something new!
The two quilts will each be set as 6 blocks by 7 blocks for 42 blocks per each, a total of 84. I've had fun doing them off and on for two years. Now I'm glad to show the last three done.

Over the weekend, I celebrated having these last blocks finished by engaging in a fun but fast diversion. I had been cleaning up around my trusty ole' White and discovered a handful of perfectly nice flying geese leftover from the Windmills of My Mind quilt's border.
What to do? I played and made some lovely Evening Star blocks out of random scraps. But I desperately wanted to finish something right away! With scraps of high loft polyester batting and an old fat quarter or two as backings and a dip into the basket of binding's leftovers and soon I had four potholders. I love them! I still do not know how I made the loop from the binding. I did it 4 times and it was slightly different each time. LOL!

The flying geese were finished at 2"X4" so the potholders are about 8 1/2" square with the binding. I'm planning on selling them for $6 for one, or, two for $10, at my yard sale. If no one will pay me that much, then I'll give them out at Christmas for presents to all my worthless relatives. LOL! Let me know if you want to buy one, I have paypal.

I also stopped in at Keepsake Quilting on Saturday and found lovely Civil War selections in the outlet store. I am horrified by this picture's coloration, the red has photographed as magenta when it is actually rich turkey red with stripes of pin dots of cheddar.

 The floral is a Faye Burgos that looks lovely with the turkey red, so I just had to have it! So now my allowance for April is all gone, but so is April, too!

Goofing Off

Monday I mailed off my Yellow 2 1/2" strip sets for the washed swap group, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QuiltvilleSwap/. They are a wonderful group and the washed section is hosted by Subee, while the unwashed section is hosted by Judi. I've been doing a swap a month with them in the strips. Here is what 100 (10 sets of ten) yellow strips looked like before I mailed them off to Indiana.

The snack sized zip baggies are just perfect to hold the twice-folded half width strips! I had a hard time coming up with ten different yellows or golds or cheddars, but I had just bought some cheddars and prewashed them, so it worked out.
We have enjoyed a week of lovely spring days that are just too nice to be in a basement sewing. The fresh air police insisted that I go goof around outdoors. I was so happy to see my Red Dynasty tulips actually blooming! That meant that the whitetail deer did not eat the buds of all the blossoms as they have done in the past. I put out the clumps of Matthew's hair from his haircut and also laid down my dried eucalyptus sprigs that I had bought decades ago from Pier One Imports.

The yellows  that you can see are the little double-headed "Tete a tete" daffodils with a few dandilions cheering them on. I love dandilions! Felix hates them and tries to keep them mowed before they go to seed.

They are so hardy and cheerful with that bright yellow!