Quilt Progress

Some people may count squares completed. Some might count how many motifs are left to stitch. I have no idea where I’m at. I seem to count progress by how often I can sit down and work on this quilt when not distracted by other projects. Being distracted is not a bad thing :)

When not being worked on, my quit is a fort for Ninja.

Pumpkin thinks it’s cozy!

  And Pixie thinks she knows how to help me do the stitching..

“Right here mom… you missed a spot…”

“What do you mean by “Move your fuzzy butt?” My fuzzy butt is exactly where it is supposed to be.”

“I know how to do this… I’m the cat…”

A Note to the Cats

Dear Kitties that I Adore,

I just wanted to let you know that this thing you are sitting on, it is my quilt… not a finished quilt, but the quilting project that I am working on. Or, you know, trying to. It is very difficult to sew neat stitches when you grab for my needle and pull on my thread.

Trust me when I say that you really do not want to catch this needle.

One thing to note – this big wooden hoop thing is for holding my project. It is NOT for biting, pouncing on, or hiding underneath.

Ok, maybe it can be for hiding underneath, if you promise to lay still on my lap and not grab at my hands with your pointy little paws! Especially, as the kids tell me how peaceful you look under there. The light coming through the cloth looks like a stained glass window up above.

(photo with no flash this time – kids thought the effect was neat..)

However, you may NOT use this hoop and cloth as a fort to defend. Calling your siblings to come attack, so you can defend from within, is not my idea of fun. It is not the kind of activity I want happening on my lap. I own no jeans of the sufficient armor level that can withstand this sort of play.

If you need some attention, you can hang out with me while I craft.

If you need ALL of the attention, let me know, I can manage that too.

I’m glad that you really, REAAALLY like this quilt project and with a little more cooperation on your part, I will get it done sooner so that you can enjoy it more freely, but you need to pay attention to the above guidelines, a little more strictly.

Oh… and quit eating my paper stencils… I sort of need those…

Love,

Mom

Anywhere a Cat Can Go - Part2

A while back I posted a collection of photos of places that we find cats in this house, and today, as I was sorting photos off of the camera, I realized that I have enough cute pics for another post.

Where to find a cat…

You might start with the obvious places, like snuggled someplace comfy,

Or in a warm patch of sun…

But, did you know that cats like a good story with a friend?

Or, you might look on top of bookshelves, that’s always a likely hiding place…

Or you may find them on the sofa, trying to use their Force mind control powers to get you to hand over the Cheez-its…

  After fending off Darth Pixie, you may turn around to discover that Ninja has called dibs on your pillow…

If you try to try to move her, she’ll give you, as Honor describes it, ‘those big eyes’… and so she usually gets to keep the pillow…

Pumpkin can often be found on my lap, he knows he’s the baby…

Cats are magical beings and might be found participating in Harry Potter battles.

You might find cats up on top of the kitchen cabinets pretending to be bookends… or… preparing for a high-rise sibling smack down!

In the winter time, warm radiators and other warm spots on the floor (we have hot pipes in certain areas) are places that suck cats right down… almost against their will…

Cats have been known to pose majestically, for no particular reason other than they seem to know how beautiful they are… so look for pedestals upon which cats might be posing themselves in a pretty and mysterious manner…

Of course, sometimes they pose like dorks…

Anywhere there is a craft project under way, there’s a high chance of a cat, or two, or even three, being present in the same location…

Some cats are extremely helpful in the kitchen… Ninja always LOVES to help with veggies brought in from the produce stand. Somebody has to eat the leaves from the broccoli  :)

Let’s see…

Where else might we find cats?

Cats love snuggly things, like warm, fuzzy, Christmas socks!

Cats can always be found in Christmas trees… duh!

and in boxes… (especially when there is BUBBLE WRAP!)

Cats might be found, during the holiday season, wrapped up in pretty paper…

And walking along the top of blinds… (why? … I do not know… )

You might even find them trying to hide, camo’ed amongst clever decoys…

You can always wait for awhile… eventually cats MUST nap… they are easy to find when sleeping.

… and if all else fails, just follow your camera bits to their end and you might be surprised at what you discover…

Sharing my Toys

I have a crafty daughter! We always have fun crafting together, but it’s getting to be even more fun now that’s she’s big enough to be more independent with some of the tools.

Here she is, helping me put together blocks for a ‘throw together’ patchwork duvet cover. This is a true recycling project, using old flannel sheets and fabric scraps!

We’ll have more photos later of this project.

Honor also found a kids’ sewing project for a sock doll and is working on that too.

Important lesson #1 – thread the needle!

Working hard on her doll

So far…

We’ll have photos of this too, as she goes along :)

Quilt – Pinning the layers and starting to sew

I suppose I ought to do a little catching up on my quilt progress. I haven’t been blogging much lately because our internet has been bad, but we have actually been busy with different things. My quilt is progressing. I had finished piecing it in September, and then had to wait a bit for some supplies to come through the mail, but I did get to work on it. Here’s what I’ve done and what I’ve learned along the way.

First, it helps to have a large flat area in which to pancake the layers for pinning. I had my pieced top, a layer of batting, and a bottom layer… not an easy job to get the three aligned and flattened properly. A few extra hands is helpful for this task.. extra paws are not so helpful. I pretty much had to just throw everything out on the floor so they could get their exploration needs sated before I dared start any work on it. I didn’t even try to iron before letting the cats have their turn.

What does this “Get off and stay off!” mean??

Ok… eventually, all the layers went together, pinned with some nice brass (no rust) safety pins, and I gathered up my gear to plan the actual quilting. I rolled up the ends so I could begin sewing in the middle of the quilt. I will work my way out to the edges (to make sure any bulge-y bits can be pushed out from the center as I go).

The next step is to eat the pattern.

…If you’re a cat. If you’re a cat owner, the photo above is just an example to show you why you should have scanned in all of your pattern pieces so you can make copies in case of unplanned ‘incidents’. (yes, I did)

Actually, my next step was to organize all the little motifs I plan to quilt. There are 96 5x5” squares in this quilt and each one will have a different cat motif. Some I found as gifs or jpegs on the internet, some I made from photographs. I used Corel Paint Shop and my Wacom tablet to make line drawings.

       

Also, I plan on tracing all of the yellow and blue ‘stars’ on the quilt.

Some motif pieces I can cut out and trace directly on the front of the quilt, but tracings on the cat pattern fabric are too difficult to see and sew, so I have been working on the ‘front’ of the quilt when I have a square of the brown fabric, and then flipping the hoop over to work the motifs that go on the cat fabric squares from the ‘back’ of the quilt. In order to line up my motifs properly, because the piecing is on the other side and all I see on the back is the solid fabric!, I baste around the patterned fabric squares with a bright color so I know where my square is supposed to be.

Actually, ‘trace’ is probably not the right word when it comes to transferring these motifs. I trace the outline, and then freehand the details from the drawing… I didn’t use any special paper or tissue… these motifs are printed on plain printer paper.

Don’t forget to taste your erasers. Or, you know, not. I’m finding that a good chalk pencil is handy on the brown fabric in front, and a silver pencil is good on the cream colored backing fabric.

Below is a finished motif. Actual cat used to show scale. I decided to use a blue quilting thread and it shows up nicely on the brown fabric. The sewn motifs do not really show up on the cat pattern squares, on the front, but they show nicely on the back.

Before I started sewing, I laid out all of the motifs and organized them. Some pictures are more detailed than others, some are more cartoonish, some more realistic. Five of them have names that I will embroider (front only) as well. I wanted to make sure I had them spread out in a pleasing manner. I decided to keep the orientation of each motif the same. I numbered the motifs according to row and column, and the stack is kept neat in a baggie with the rest of my supplies.

The fun part…hand quilting. And it is fun. I was worried that 96 motifs, plus all of the stars, might be a bit much, but each one is different and I am having fun with it. I get a lot of encouragement from my family and felines too, not to mention very close supervision…

Sometimes too close

It is fascinating.

and cute.

Besides, as inconvenient, and sometimes painful, as my ‘helpers’ might be at times, they have good input… all quilts should be made with love.