Working Cats

Good morning, my friends. It was a mostly sewing day yesterday. My projects are moving along. I've practically worn myself out trying to decide how to finish my art quilt. With the help of my sewing cat, I was able to settle on a design yesterday. So let's just get to it, shall we?

After writing yesterday's post, I spent about an hour of my morning pulling fabrics and trying to decide on a background design for my art quilt. I hemmed and hawed, and hawed and hemmed, and sniffled and snuffled. Sadly, I used a lot of time and decided on nothing. By that time, I didn't want to spend too much time on my walking, and so I ended up doing the treadmill. The treadmill wasn't my first choice, but it's less distracting and so it takes less time. I can stretch a short walk into hours with my itchy shutter finger, and I really wanted to finish the quilting.

So, the treadmill it was, and then I took a shower and got dressed. Then, and only then, was I able to make my way around quilting the outer red border. When it was finished, I laid it out on the living room floor for a picture. It's a huge quilt...one of the largest I've quilted myself. Without hesitation, I can say that I'm very glad to have that part done.

Of course, no quilt can be finished without furrst being inspected by the kitties. Being a cat quilt will win you no favors. 

I would like to purruse the back, please.

It is acceptable. You may purrceed.

Here's an unobstructed view of the back.

After it's picture session, I folded it up. It still needs binding, but I'm going to set that aside for a few days. I really want to finish up my art quilt. I'll plan to have this binding finished as a take-along project when we try again on our camping trip in mid-December.

Next, I went back to my art quilt conundrum of trying to choose the right fabrics and the right design for the background. Smitty was my faithful companion for this. Beside him are only just a few of the fabrics that were auditioned and rejected.

And Smitty had some ideas too. (He's an excellent designer. You should see how he can redesign a small rodent. It's very impressive.)

This purrple could be purrfect.

Finally, after much head-scratching and teeth-gnashing, I came up with this background.

And then, I gulped hard and fused the main subject. Here, you can only have a peek.

Next, I'll be adding thread work. There will be thread-painting and shading, and then a good part of the design will be in the quilting. I wasn't quite in the right headspace to tackle it yesterday, and so I set it aside for today's effort.

There were just a couple more things I wanted to accomplish. I needed to give the top cat on Purrfectly Pieced another eye. 

When I completed the block originally, the eye was there.

It got lost somewhere along the way. No worries. I added another. These are hot fix nailheads, and they usually stay on pretty well.

And then, this poor bird never had his eye attached.

There we go. That's better. A guy's gotta see, doesn't he?

Okay, and that was enough sewing for one day. I was ready to sit and relax for a while before dinner.

So, today I'll get back to my art quilt. I don't know if I can finish the thread work today, but I'll give it a go. There's one housekeeping chore to do, and I'd like to get back to the Bowflex. I had to take nearly a week off for my wrist. 

Mike volunteered to make waffles for breakfast this morning, and I hear him moving around in the kitchen. Better get 'em while they're hot.