Sue and I walked this morning. It rained. A lot. We were wet by the time we finished. When I got home, spending the afternoon in the sewing room sounded divine, and that's just what I did. When I left off, I'd only pulled fabrics from my stash for this latest cat. First I had to piece together the background.
The background ended up taking far longer than expected for reasons too hard to explain in writing. If you're a glutton for punishment, I'd be happy to bore you in a separate email. If not, then just take my word for it.
Nevertheless, I was feeling pretty smug at this point, thinking I was well along. Only, then I looked more closely at the cat and realized he was another one whose tail and feet extended out into the sashing. That meant I had to put all the borders and the right side of the sashing on before I could continue. It also meant making strip sets for the checkerboard sashing. Fortunately, there is just one more sashing needed to complete the quilt, and I've done both. And, yes, that did restore me to my former smugness. (I looked up "smugness" just now. Yes, it is a word. I didn't just make that up. It was a little disappointing to realize that.)
So with that done, I was ready to make the appliques and fuse the cat. This one makes me think of Captain Cattastic. (You would need to have been reading long enough to remember George, Smitty's predecessor.)
This cat happens to be leaping for a dragonfly. I can't fuse the dragonfly until I've sewn this row of blocks to the row above it because the dragonfly extends into the sashing above.
Coincidentally, this quilt was featured today on the Quilt Inspiration blog. Click on that link, and you can see the quilt that was made by Kathy Mack of the River City Quilt Guild in Sacramento, California. The guild held a show recently, and Kathy's quilt won an Honorable Mention in the show. I'm only showing you this one image of the block I'm currently working on, so that you can see the placement of the dragonfly.
Now all that's left is to do the top-stitching and embroider the face. That's enough for one day, however. I'm just going to keep on going until I have all of the cats finished. It's getting very close now.
9 comments:
Glad to see George make it into this quilt - so deserves the honor. Oh, and she needle turned her's - wow. I would be fusing too. I am sure you will have this one done by the weekend.
Yay for Captain Cattastic! Love the stripes on this one. It's amazing how different the same pattern comes out with different makers. My guild had a mystery quilt designed just for us that we ran in our newsletter. 3 people brought finished ones in at our last meeting, and they looked nothing alike!
Very few things I miss about Sacramento, but I DO miss my guild...the River City Quilt Guild...and the wonderfully talented men and women in it. Nice job with cat No.11 I, too, thought of Chanel when I saw your title. Great minds and all that, you know.
Great choice of fabrics for this block. When fusing the cat to the pieced background, do the impressions from the seams on the squares show up on the cat? It doesn't look like it does in the pictures, but I've always wondered if the seams would show on the fused design.
I'm so happy to see George chasing a dragonfly :). It's always interesting to see how someone else did the quilting, but sometimes I'd rather not know, does that make sense?
You are coming along so nicely. Love this last cat and the way he explodes out of the block!!! So cute!!!!!
Kathy Mack's cat quilt is wonderful! And I know yours will be just as or more wonderful as hers! (She said with smugness.LOL)
You've made lots of progress. Your block 11 does look a lot like Captain Cattastic.
Her cats are very bright! beautiful work!
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