Thinking Cat

Good morning, my friends. The rain is supposed to start up today, but it's bright and sunny right now. It seems to me these recent rain forecasts have failed to materialize. Maybe this time will be different. Whatever happens, I know what I'll be doing. I'll be sewing. How about you?

Yesterday saw me finishing up the fifth block and the whole first row of the Stair Steps project. The endless cutting for these blocks isn't my favorite thing to do, but I believe I'm going to love this quilt. Some of you probably follow Bonnie Hunter's method of organizing your scraps. I do not. There are two reasons for this: 1) I make a lot of applique quilts and collage quilts, and so I want to keep my scraps in larger pieces...not necessarily cut into strips and squares; and 2) it's a process of doing today what you can put off until tomorrow, and that just isn't my way. 

So, with that, I present to you, block number five of the first row.

Here are all the blocks I have for the first row. One row down, four to go.

And this is probably the thing I dislike most about working with scraps...all these little threads. Good grief. They get everywhere, and I can barely sew even a short seam without first having to pick them off. 

Sadie was my helper cat yesterday. 

Please purrmit me to assist you.

Only after that entreaty, she saw something that gave her paws.

What do I see there? Cats?!?

Dost thou have other cats before me?

Well, she was thoroughly offended when I started pulling out cat after cat after cat from my fabric bins.

When I left you yesterday, I had an idea for my next project. I was thinking of this panel, and considering how it would look to cut apart the sections, and sew them into bordered blocks to be placed randomly. I have tons (almost literally) of cat fabrics that I might be able to turn into something cute and fun.

The larger blocks are 6-1/2 inches square.

The smaller ones are 3-1/2 inches.

Also in the drawer with the first panel was this one. Could I use both in the same quilt?

The individual blocks are about 3-3/4 inches, but I could probably fudge and cut them to 3-1/2 inches.

So then I got out my huge bin of cat fabrics. It's a heavy sucker.

Inside, I found all these saved books and patterns. Sheesh. No wonder it's so heavy.

Also...another cat panel. Hmmmm. Curiouser and curiouser. Could I also incorporate this somehow?

These blocks could be cut to 6-1/2 inches as well.

So I went through all those books and printed patterns, looking for some kind of inspiration. Then I went online, searching for the first panel, "Fantastic Felines." And I found this pattern:

Well, that's kind of cute. I like that. It measures 27 inches square as it's shown here, but I could easily make it larger and incorporate blocks from the other two panels. It would be easy.

So, I ended up buying the pattern. And, yes, I could probably figure it out on my own. But that would require math, and as you very well know, I'm too old for math. I'm happy to pay someone else $10 to do the math for me. I'll set all of this aside until the pattern arrives, and then I'll go to work on it.

It was time to start dinner by then. We had Enchiladas Suizas made from the tomatillos I picked up at the farmer's market last week. This is one of Mike's favorite dishes.

What I want you to notice in this picture, however, is the salad in the upper right. That was a new recipe for Fresh Corn and Black Bean Salad with Corn Chips. Usually, I make a Spanish rice when I serve Enchiladas Suizas, but this salad seemed like a nice change. It used four ears of the fresh corn from the farmer's market. I've linked to the recipe there, but I did it a little differently. For one thing, I used just one can of black beans. That seemed like enough to me. Also, I added chunks from half an avocado up front. The dressing has lime juice, and so the avocado won't turn brown. Finally, we crunched up the corn chips when we had it on our plates. There are leftovers. If the corn chips are added at the beginning, they'll just be soggy when we eat the leftovers. So, yeah. That was good. I'd make it again.

Okay, and that brings me to my slow stitching. I've stitched it most of the way now. Probably I'll spend some extra time on this and finish it up this morning.

It's hooped up and waiting for me downstairs.

And since I can't move forward with my "Quilter's Choice" projects (including the Sashiko piece), I'll move on to quilting this quilt that's currently draped over my machine. This is the Barn yard quilt. 

I haven't given a lot of thought to this yet, but I expect I'll do some kind of dot-to-dot quilting on it. I'll need to select threads and get my tension adjusted. After that, I'll study the blocks and figure out how to proceed.

Right now, though, it's time for our Sunday morning blueberry oatmeal pancakes. We missed our pancakes last week since I was prepping for my "oscopy" procedure. Happy to have that behind me now, and those pancakes are going to taste especially good this morning.