Cat Fur

I've been busy with work, but have been slowly making progress on the cat fur, hand quilting.

Thanks for all the great comments that I received on my last post.  I used Marley-cat on purpose for scale as I had suspected that there were many people who had not made the connection between the terms "Big Ass Cat" and 64 inch square...to realize this is a REALLY  big cat applique.

My next blog is #200...and occasion for a big fabric, thread, gadget, give-away.  I am also using this occasion to "tip my hand" and let you see what I do as my day job.  I am launching my professional blog as "Marjorie Rich, Nutrition Expert".  In a weak moment, I promised to blog, tweet, Facebook, If you are interested in how food relates to disease (including prevention and treatment), I invite you to follow my blog-tweet-FB-web as I post ideas over the next year.

Cat Progress

The Charley Harper Calico Cat is finally whole.  Although, after snapping this picture, I realized I still needed to add a branch under her head and a spot on the thigh.

And whiskers.  I forgot the whiskers before I started sandwiching the quilt too....I'll applique them on top when the quilting is done.

My cat was most helpful (not) as I was basting the quilting sandwich together on my living room floor.

The good news (from my last cat quilt post) is that I discovered I had enough of the sage from where I cut away the background fabric from the cat body to make the leaves that I still needed.

Yesterday I dug through the garage stash (that's where large cut yardage and non-quilting fabrics live) and found enough of the same color to use for a backing.

Normally, I like to do a pieced back for 2-sided interest.   This time, I think the front is so interesting that I don't want to detract.

Also, I am going to hand-quilt the cat and the branches b/c I want that extra texture that only comes with hand quilting & cotton batting.  Here's the cat fur from the back.  This was about an hour's meandering quilting.  I quite like it.

Mr Postman

A little mood music from the Carpenters....

Or from Stevie B....

Bottom line...before the week is over I'm getting to the post office.
To send Natasha some Christmas Scraps.
I wish I could have sent Christine the batik triangle scraps...but "no-reply" blogger means..."compost pile".
And Victoria needs her Signature Block

What I love about this block is that I used really modern style fabrics and a very traditional style and font for the signature.  My challenge was taking a Hawaiian style block and shrinking it down to 6 inches.  And I did needle-turn applique, which means the shapes ended up to be slightly different from how I imagined them.  I used a Bic permanent marker, which bleeds into the fabric more than the Pigma pens I usually use.  I guess it's an OK trade-off for being able to sign with a dark burgundy instead of black or brown.

I am in the midst of several home improvement projects as well as a busy work schedule, which frankly drags me away from my quilting time.  I'm also being very frugal with my posts, as I'm approaching my 200th post which means PARTY TIME...er...I mean...CRAZY GIVE AWAYS!  Since I'm a hobby blogger, I don't have corporate sponsors, so I've been purchasing some extra goodies with all my % off coupons.  There will be more of my custom Charm Square Packs and a " Favorite Things" Hand Applique gift package.  I may even buy a gift certificate at my favorite LQS (who has a great on-line shop).  What else would you like me to include?

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.

Saturday - Spring Cleaning

I had great plans to work on Big Ass Charley (the Charley Harper Cat on a Limb) today, but I needed to do something about the project creep that was happening in the living room.   I started by going through the 14 project bins and the piles of new fabrics.

This is the Tower of Scraps.  Months ago I started buying and saving the plastic bins from organic salad greens.  Today, I pulled all the scraps from misc. projects and sorted them into my color categories.  Frankly...I was shocked that I had the same color of scraps in 2 or 3 different project bins.  I moved most that was less than 5" or-so in size to these bins.

By moving all my print yardage ( 1/2 yard or less) into one drawer, I was able to put all my random batiks into a single drawer as well.
I have several other bins of batik...these are just ones I love...not ones with a specific mission.

I came across my stash of little batik triangles that were left-over from cutting hexies for Rita's quilt.  I had this Evil Plan for scattering them around and making a fabric from them.  I also ran across the fuchsia print fabric that I had put the Wonder Under mistakenly on the "right" side when I was making Stephanie's Baby Quilt. I did my best of randomly scattering the triangles.

After ironing them in place, I did a 1/2 inch-ish grid of stitching to hold them in place.

Which lead to a project that took most of the rest of the day.

I ended up making a 20" pillow with the  new fabric,  adding  chunks of fabric I'd found in the cleaning process plus some from the hexi project box.

Here it is in the spring garden with the bit of the Rita's Hexi quilt that I have done.

You know me...I had to make it reversable.  There are 3 scrap hexies, 2 fabric hexies and a bunch of random triangles attached with fuseable web and raw edge stitching.  Yea...people who really know me are ROFLMAOing  b/c they know how much I hate both this process and the outcome.  As long as I keep saying "it's a pillow, not an heirloom" it's all good.

I REALLY wish that magnolia blossom that popped into the photo was on the pillow.   Hmmmm...maybeeee  if I.... No.  not this project.  Never mind.

I have about a quart size baggie full of these triangles. If you want them to be yours, leave me a comment with what you will do with them.

Also, if you'd like these scraps...they're up for grabs. Leave a comment specifically for these.

Even More Shop Hop Blocks

This block from the Charm Shack (Ontario) was one of my 3 favorites.  Unfortunately, when I pulled the material out, I discovered that what looked like a fuchsia batik at a distance, was actually a print fabric, and quite orange.  It was swapped out for this batik.

The blue is more grey than the others I've been using, but hopefully will blend in the long run.

The "Two-Fer" block from Quilts Plus (Halfway) was much more rainbowy than I was looking for.  The yellow and red definitely had to go.  The pink was if-y...much more orange in real life than the photo.  And as much as I like a good leprechaun green...this just wasn't doing anything for me.   Fortunately all but the green are great batiks that I will certainly use in other ways.

 I kept the dk blue, lt purple and dk green as well as the provided black and pulled the rest from the stash.

Huge thanks to Bailey who is picking up a kit for me in Crouch tomorrow.  That was 10 hours into the hop for us and I didn't realize until I got home that I forgot to buy a kit while I was purchasing my huge stack of other fabrics.

More Shop Hop Blocks

I have to admit that I didn't like this block much before I started working with it today.  Now I think it would be great for a whole quilt.  This was the block from Nancy's Quilts (Nampa) except I substituted the lime for white.  Both the black and pink were part of the original kit.  I LOVE it with this color combo!!!  It was also super easy.  It's a 9-patch block that is cut in quarters and re-assembled.  Very nice.

I also sewed up the "Whimsy Heart" from Granny's Attic (McCall) as it was in the kit.  I hadn't done foundation piecing for a while, so I sewed several sections down the wrong way.  I also was concerned the whole time that I would run out of fabric if I'd misaligned something.  The only negative about this block, is that I liked Ethne's suggestion to put these all on point...but I think the tipped heart might look weird.

My goal is to keep chipping away at the kits, at least one a day on the average.  I say that b/c the Quilt Crossing block is an applique. Since it was my first block, I started it by hand...and feel obligated to finish that way.   The stems & flowers are done...and the leaves basted.