Some Tiny Sewing

There wasn't much on yesterday's agenda beyond sewing, and so I went back to work on the placemats that were started the day before.

Let's all paws here for a moment to admire how purrfectly this fabric matches my furs.

Sadie was my consultant about jazzing these up a little with different fabrics, and this is what I came up with.

Now they're sewn together and sandwiched for quilting. I wish I'd made the strips on the right a little wider, but I'll stick with them as they are. The quilting adds a lot, and so a nice variegated gold thread will spice them up a little too.

Those are going to be set aside for a day or two, however. The next project was to catch up on the Tiny Tuesday blocks. The first one is called Bullseye.

It was set diagonally.

Smitty helped by reading the directions out loud as the cutting progressed.

But you know...cats tire quickly. After a meeting of the minds, they decided to switch places.

Smitty was so worn out, he could barely keep his eyes open, and his lasers needed recharging badly.

Don't let this purrturb you for another minute, Smitty. Let a girl cat take over.

And so she helped me piece together the Split 16 Patch. This went together surprisingly quickly. This is a great scrap block. My tiniest scraps were used in all of these blocks.

The Split 16 Patch was straight set.

Finally, the last block for this Tiny Tuesday quilt was completed. The last one is called Cornerstones. It was diagonally set. As I tried to take a picture...whoops.

Okay, there we go. Since this was to be set diagonally, the center block was fussy cut so that it would be standing upright rather than lying on its side.

Okay...and that's the end of that. There are 44 blocks total...only I think I have 45. Somewhere I ended up with an extra.

So...what to do next? What. To. Do? It seems as good a time as any to tackle my oldest UFO. In fact, this isn't just my current UFO...it's the quilt that has taken me the longest to finish...ever...in the history of quilting at the Three Cats Ranch. I suppose it deserves some kind of medal, wouldn't you agree? These are all the blocks I made for the Mulligan Stew quilt. You can read more about the origin of this quilt right here. It's from a book entitled, "Hobo Quilts," by Deborah Henninger.

If you look at the block second from the right in the second full row, you see a cat. That block is called "Kind-Hearted Lady." You might recall I picked up this little souvenir dust collector during our visit to the American Museum of the House Cat.

Here's the explanatory note on the back:

Getting back to the book and the quilt, I wanted to make every quilt block in the book. There are other projects in Deborah Henninger's book, but this is the one I chose, called "Mulligan Stew."

So, you can see that the blocks are sewn together with a narrow sashing, which is what my plan includes. However, I had in mind to create a border to suggest a railroad track. In my wanderings on Pinterest, I found this pattern from It's Sew Emma. It pretty clearly laid out the measurements for creating a railroad track, and so I'm going to riff off the measurements from this quilt.

Yesterday I spent some time searching through my stash and came out with some fabrics I think will get the job done. (I'm trying not to purchase more fabric.)

So that's where I'll start today, once I get my sewing hat on.

Progress on Tree #7 for Twelve Trees for Christmas continues. I'm hoping I'll finish this tomorrow or the next day. Here's where it stands. 

I've fussed and fussed with this "Braid Stitch," and it is challenging. I wish my stitches were a little more consistent and even, but this is as good as it gets for now. I'm hoping it'll look better when the red beads are added.