Cat Top

The top half of the cat is finished.  This was earlier this afternoon when I was testing the lay-out.

Since then, the leaves that lay flat as well as all of the cat have been hand-appliqued in place.  The quilted leaves that needed to be tucked in behind the cat were also included.  I'll add the rest of them later.  I know that I could have machine quilted these down, but there is something incredibly satisfying to me about the look of needleturn.

For the flat leaves I stitched an extra-lightweight interfacing onto the right side of the leaf fabric (left leaf), cut a slit in the interfacing and turned it right side out (bottom right) then pressed on the fabric side (the interfacing didn't like my hot iron).

The bottom half is laid out, but I'm at an impasse.  I bought 4 fabrics for the leaves before I'd done anything silly like figuring out how many of each color that I wanted.  It wasn't until I started sewing the leaves that I realized that I'm short 6 leaves of the less desirable fabrics 3 &4.  I have more of color 1 so I can still make it work, but will have to completely   re-layout my kind-of-carefully planned color distribution.  And I was all ready to do that, until I realized that I'm also out of the sage background fabric that I've been using on the back of the leaves.   Which leaves me wondering if I have something in the stash that I can use rather than going to buy anything else.  Which in turn, makes me wonder what I'm going to use for the back of the quilt.   Ack.  I wonder how many days I can leave it on the living room floor before I get complaints?

Last night I finally finished the Quilt Crossing (Boise) shop hop block.  There is supposed to be a small purple flower with a pink center in the very center.  It's fine as is.  The flowers were designed for Accucut flowers and top stitching so they were a royal pain to needle turn.

I guess I'll wait for a solution to come to me and get started on a friendship block that I added to my "to do" list.