Saturday Sigh

Today is a free day for me...no place to go, nothing to do but sew. Given that it's raining out, it seems the best way to spend the day.

Remember the Salt Water Taffy quilt? It's a flannel scrap quilt that I finished up about a year ago.

It's so cozy and comfy. Every morning you'll find me snuggled up under it, drinking my coffee, reading my email, and doing my embroidery. It's Gracie's favorite quilt.

Believe it or not, I have a fairly significant allergy to cats. I inherited it from my mother, whose allergies were so bad that we couldn't have cats when I was growing up. 

I'm a born cat lover. We moved to Hawaii when I was 8 years old, and my folks got me a Siamese kitten. Within 24 hours, my mother was having serious asthma problems, and her eyes had swollen shut. A visit to the doctor made it clear that the kitten had to go. I'll never forget my mom and dad sitting me down to tell me that either the cat had to go, or my mom had to go. In my young mind I thought, "It's been nice knowing you, Mom." Of course, I knew enough at that age to know there was really only one choice. The kitten had to go. They gave me a dachshund puppy to replace the kitten, and that was fine, but I still wanted a cat my whole life. Mike and I were married only six months before we got our first cat. We've never been catless since.

So I'm telling you all of this to explain that I have to wash these well-loved cat quilts fairly frequently. They make me sneeze when they get too overloaded with cat dander. I washed all the flannel quilts recently. A couple of days ago, I was sitting in my usual morning position when I saw this:

Well, doesn't that just frost your nostrils? 

Sigh.

I checked all over the quilt for any similar unravelings, and found none, thank goodness. 

This quilt was made from scraps that were given to me. Some were no doubt from well-used pajamas, and I suspect that's why this piece came apart. So...what to do? At first I told myself I was going to take all the blocks apart and fix it right, although I'm not sure how I'd do it completely right without a pretty significant deconstruction. Then I realized, geez, it's just a utility quilt. It's not like it's ever going to win an award at Paducah or something. So I decided to make my patchwork even patchier. I just made a patch and sewed it on by machine. 

I had some fabric left over from the back, and I used that. Then, just for grins, I gave it its own tie. Just before I sat down here to write this, I showed it to Mike and I had to point out the patch before he even noticed it.

My term for this is "tantalizingly tacky." Here's how it looks from the back.

Good as new, only better, because now it's extra-utilitarian and even more comfy.

With that done, I got the Aspen Tree quilt to flimsy stage. That green border fabric and some of the leaves are made with Vicki Welsh's hand-dyed fabrics. After staring at this for quite some time, I decided to use the top-stitching for the quilting. My plan is to outline the tree and the leaves in black, and then I'll add some thread painting to the tree to make it look like an Aspen tree.

Recall that the Aspen trees have these really lovely white trunks with black markings.

This is the fabric I have for the back.

It's a small quilt at 18 x 33 inches, and so I just needed to cut a piece to size.

At that point, I was ready to start sandwiching my quilts. I already had backs cut for Shoot for the Moon

and Sew Helpful.

But I needed to piece a back for the larger Psycatdelic:

That turned out to be a bit of a chore getting it to the right size, but I got 'er done.

Sigh. 

Sandwiching quilts is my least favorite part of quilting. I decided to start with Psycatdelic since that is going to be the hardest one. It's too large to spray baste, and so I'm resorting to Sharon Schamber's method of rolling the top and back onto boards and then thread basting. I've done this before, except the last time I pin-basted. Several of you advised me that it was just as easy to thread baste, and so that's what I'm doing this time around. You better not be lying to me. I do have your names written down, and vee haf our vays of dealing with trouble-makers.

Speaking of trouble-makers...

I would say that my helper cat was helping, except that he's not a good helper. He is a "hinder".

Sigh.

Say, Mom, this quilt sandwich looks delicious!

Let's just say he puts a drag on things.

With no small amount of effort, I managed to get back and top rolled onto their respective boards, and then I was ready to start making my sandwich and basting. Sharon Schamber suggests using white or gray thread for this. I have a whole roll of this brown pearl cotton that I've never used, and so I'm using that. I hope I don't regret it because it isn't the easiest to see.

So I'm just barely getting started on this, but I took a break here because my back was aching from all of that.

My "hinder" cat has moved on to greener quilt-napping pastures.

It's going to be an hours-long process before this is finished. I'll return to it later today, and continue with it tomorrow.

It makes me happy that the remaining quilts needing sandwiching are small ones. In the meantime...

Sigh.