Good morning, my friends. Quite a storm blew through last night. We had a couple of power "hits," but never lost power. We learned from one of our lower-down-the-hill neighbors that one of our trees came down last night. Mike will have to get out with a chainsaw this morning and unblock the driveway we share. For now, it's possible to get around it, but it will need to get moved as soon as he's up and around. Neither of us has been out to see it. (We learned via text message.) I need to leave for a doctor's appointment this morning, and so I'll try to get some pictures before I drive off.
There was a good amount of sewing time yesterday. I went to work sewing the Kittens into a finished quilt top. My first step was to figure out what to do about the size differentials among them. You might remember when I purchased this pattern while we were in Three Forks, Montana. It was published by Jack Dempsey Needle Art.
I liked it because...cats...obvi. But I also liked it as a traveling project. Since the blocks were all stamped on fabric, it seemed like an easy take-along stitchery.
Here's a look at it close-up. The fabric wasn't particularly high quality, but I backed all my blocks with muslin to give them a little more heft and less transparency.
And then, over the course of several different trips, I stitched all of them.
So, checking their sizes, they were all pretty much the same size. Eyeballing them, this one turned out to be the smallest.
Measuring, I decided to trim all the blocks to 8-1/2 inches square.
From there, the first step was to choose a solid border for each one. I selected a color that was contained in the block, and I made each one a different color. Here's the parade of kittens:
If there were duplicate colors, then I differentiated them by choosing different shades of the same color.
Originally, I intended to keep them all pastel. That limited my range of colors, and so I discarded that rule early on.
until they were all finished.
Sewing on these borders took the whole of my sewing afternoon.
And now that they're all done...
It's time to decide how to sew them all together.
My plan is still to float them on a single fabric selection.
And if you're tired of looking at these, imagine how I felt when I reached the last one. Phew. That took longer than expected.
And so I'd already selected this fabric from my voluminous stash of cat fabrics. I have a lot of this. There's probably enough to finish the top and the back.
Checking to see if I still liked this, I laid some of the blocks on top.
Probably I'll stick with this fabric, but I'm going to take one last look at my stash before I go any farther with this.
As I mentioned, I have a doctor's appointment this morning. (There's always something, isn't there?) It's just a routine skin check with my dermatologist. Fingers crossed she doesn't find anything worrisome. It'll take most of my morning, but I should have some time to sew this afternoon. There's nothing else on today's to-do list.
There's still a little over an hour before I need to leave, and so I can still fit some slow-stitching into my morning. Breakfast is first, and then I'll settle in.
4 comments:
Kittens are wide-eyed, soft and sweet. With needles in their jaws and feet. ~ Pam Brown
Those colorful borders around the kittens really make them pop, what a great idea!
The colorful frames work really well with those blocks and the setting fabric you've chosen. Hope the dermatology check goes well. I have one of those in April.
At first I wasn’t sure I liked the cat fabric as the sashing until you laid the blocks out on it, it’s Purrfect🐱! The fabric brings spot light to your blocks. Great work.
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