More kitties

Just a little more work on the Sawtooth cat quilt - it's been a busy weekend. Here is another piece of the border, and two more tails, which need to be turned and pressed and stitched on to the top. I think there are about 6 more tails to stitch. Not sure how many border pieces,but quite a few. They are fairly quick to sew, though, once I actually get my act in gear and do it!

One I made earlier

Finally got around to dragging back out the Sawtooth Cat quilt - it's been languishing for some time, with all that remains to be done the tails of the cats and the border around the outside edge. That's still a lot of paper piecing, but I'm going to work on it a bit for a while, at least.  I have about 6 border pieces partly pieced, but I need 28 (I think) - and I need to make the templates for the rest of them, so that can be a telly project in the next week or so.  The tails, I have ready to stitch (some of them are done), but just need to stitch them...

Evolution of a tail

I've been working on the cat quilt again this weekend, but it's not very interesting to show you the same thing time and time again, so I went for a different approach this time, and decided to show you the way the tails are made.  I've started with a piece of "magic paper" - aka tea bag paper - which is a nice, soft sort of tissue  (only stronger) which is great for paper piecing (you can leave it in) with the tail shape (including seam allowance) drawn on it.

Let the paper piecing begin...

...and carry on...

Here's a tail with all the piecing completed - as you can see, there's rather a large piece of red hanging off the edge of the piece. When I'm piecing like this, with lots of scraps, I don't bother to try to cut them down to close to the size needed - I just let them hang over and trim when it comes to the next round. Then I can put the largest trimmings back in the pile for more piecing!

Here's a tail which has been trimmed, but not folded under and pressed with seam allowance. 

And here's a finished tail, though it's not attached to the quilt top, just laid out on my rather dirty ironing board cover.  I now have 8 tails fully completed (though only 4 appliqued to the top) and another 3 or 4 partly pieced. I need 20...  And I have 5 border rectangles done, with another 5 in progress. Only 18 to go!

A few cats with tails

I've now finished 5 tails and 3 or 4 of the border strips - I decided that I'd better turn, press and applique the tails as I went along so the process didn't drive me bonkers... Here's the quilt top with the tails turned, pressed and pinned - later in the evening I did stitch 4 of the 5 down before I got tired of doing it. 

Slowly but surely!

Can you tell what it is yet?

As promised to myself, I have started working on the cat quilt again - this is two tails (I have to make 20) and 1 complete and 3 partial border segments (28 needed in total). The border segments are fine; the tails are easy to piece, but then they have to have the seam allowances folded in and pressed and be appliqued onto the top. That part is going to be less easy, I feel!

Thoughts for 2012

I've talked a bit about some of the plans I have for 2012, but I thought I'd solidify them a bit here. I've mentioned wanting to continue if not precisely reducing my stash, at least rationalising it - that is, using up some of the fabrics I've accumulated which just sit around to no purpose, and so forth.

Last year, I did a pretty good job of reducing my scraps, and while I'd certainly not say I was scrap free, it's all a lot more manageable than it was. I will continue to use them up in projects, but let's face it, you can never be truly scrap free unless you stop sewing!

So the plan is to focus on reducing the larger pieces of stash - especially those in these two photos - the shelf of pieces which are 1/2 metre or larger. The first step was to sort, refold and in some cases, label those fabrics, which I have done. I now have a stack of largish pieces (2-4 metres)

A few two metre pieces

 and a large stack of one metre pieces.

Then, there's a pile of odd sized pieces and some 1/2 metre pieces, which I think will grow quite a bit when I sort out my "smaller bits" boxes.

These shelves (below) are full of Ikea CD storage boxes. There are 22 of them, three or four of which have very specifically themed fabrics in them (Christmas, Civil War Repros, African fabrics, maybe something else), but the rest of are sorted by colour (more or less - also stripes, metallics, etc).  In theory, nothing in these boxes is more than 1/2 metre of fabric, but of course, sometimes I slip. So I want to go through each box and tidy it up and take out any larger pieces (or any very small pieces) and put them somewhere more appropriate.

This also gives me the chance to refold some of the pieces (ironing where necessary) that have got squished, etc and also, just to see what's there. Sometimes you forget about stuff. Especially if it's stuff which was given you, you picked up in a sale or which was part of a packet of fabric, so you might not have paid as much attention to it as you would have otherwise. Some of these pieces might get used in the process, but that's not really the main aim, just a bit of organisation.  It's the larger pieces I want to do a few things with.

I also mentioned wanting to reduce my batik stash a bit - that's still true, but I'm not sure precisely what I'm going to do there. I was considering doing a circular flying geese block each month with the batiks, but I think I'm going to use that block for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge instead - I don't need to do a lot of stuff with scraps, but this will be something fun to do each month to carry on with the scrap reduction.  So, I'm still thinking about batiks. 

I also plan to start anew with the Farmer's Wife Quilt, this time in Japanese taupes (and similar fabrics), which will use the fabrics in this drawer - not that I mind having these, mind you.

A couple of other plans for 2012 include carrying on with the two private swaps I am in theory participating in - we are in a bit of a slowdown at the moment - a taupe Lady of the Lake swap with Cathi and an African block swap with Karol-Ann. Luckily, Cathi is busy doing excellent scrapbooking at the moment and Karol-Ann has a 10 week old baby, so neither of them is putting too much pressure on me to produce blocks for these swaps.

And finally, I have promised my mother to get back to this quilt, which I abandoned some time ago - it only (and here I use only in a somewhat ironic sense) needs a sawtooth border all the way around it and tiny sawtooth, appliqued tails for all the cats.  I may not finish it in 2012, but there will be progress, at the very least!

Purple Roses

Here are the two things I actually worked on today - I put the outer sashing on the cats - it will now have a sawtooth border around that - this will take a while to piece. I also started working a block with a purple rose theme for the April block for the birthday block swap - I have all the pieces ready (except the stems) - just have to work out how I want to put them together. I have used a pattern for a single rose, with bud & two leaves, but I decided to add another rose, so now of course I will need to fiddle around with it - I can't ever keep anything simple, of course! In the original pattern, the stem was pieced as well, but I may end up do bias strips appliqued on, as it may work better. We'll see - I'm going to try to get the piece together tomorrow, if I don't get too frustrated with it!

Tic Tac Cats

Yes, it looks like a giant tic-tac-toe at the moment (or Naughts & Crosses, as we call it here). I finished the last two cats today (bottom right) and joined the major pieces, but honestly, is there anything more boring than sashing? Seriously, I didn't have enough time to put the sashing pieces around the outside, so that will get done next time - perhaps tomorrow morning, before my life becomes consumed by Monsters and Aliens (a promised cinema trip), a pair of jeans for Olivia, finding a lunch venue that isn't McDonalds and an orthodontist appointment. Yes, the excitement of a school holiday takes some beating!

Anyway, the pale fabric goes all the way around the edges of the quilt as well, then there's a sawtooth border (yep, more piecing!) on the outside - quite a narrow one, and of course, that one's straight, so it's easy peasy.

More cats

Despite a day full of typical holiday kid stuff (swimming, lunch, trip to the playground which is near the pool , refereeing disagreements) I managed to get most of the rest of the cats done - only two more to go, which will hopefully get pieced tomorrow, when the only thing on the agenda is grocery shopping. Then I have to put the pieces together - and then, on to the tails - yuck!

Arc of a cat

No whole cats to show today - though for the sake of good taste, I have resisted titling this post "disembodied cats". I did work on the quilt, as shown above - got all 6 of the remaining backs done. The next step will be to piece the two curves either side of the arc, and then add the background and cat bodies - those are fairly easy additions as all of them are simple shapes, like squares and rectangles. Once that's done, I can join the major pieces together with the other background fabric. All that should go fairly quickly, but I anticipate hitting a stalling point after that - I have to make 20 pieced tails - they are miniature versions of the backs. And then they have to be appliqued on. Ho hum. So I may take a break before I get to that.

For those of you who may be new here, there is a photo of what the finish quilt is meant to look like somewhere back in the dim past of my blog.

Easter Kitties

Well, as my April goals and deadlines are proceeding along apace, I decided to tackle something I've been ignoring - my sawtooth cats. I had planned to make one a month starting in February, but it just wasn't happening. Not sure why, as they aren't that hard, but somehow I lacked motivation. It might be simply that there are lots of pieces to sort out for each one - even after you do the backs - and because of the layout, they aren't necessarily the same in each block - and so on. However, today I got stuck into it and made 6 blocks! The bottom left two (the backs for these were already done), and the group of four in the centre. Tomorrow I will try to do some more, as I am in the mood now and also, having worked on it today, it's fresh in my mind and will hopefully be less hassle to figure out because of that.

In theory, this quilt will be for my mother's spare bedroom, but she tells me there's no hurry for it, as she will have to repaint the bedroom if the quilt is to look good in there. I am thinking I might try to get it done for her next visit, which is in July. We'll see, but it somehow doesn't seem quite as insurmountable an obstacle as before!

Cats & Huts

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will no doubt recognise these cats, which will eventually be a quilt for my mother - I am hand-piecing the sawtooth backs, and doing the rest by machine - there will be 20 cats in total - I have finished 8, with another one in process. Actually, they aren't quite finished, as they will also have tails, but those are appliqued on later, once the blocks are assembled (there's another neutral fabric to set between the groups of blocks) into a top. The project sort of got stuck in a basket at the bottom of my basket stack, but I have brought it back out - I'm try to get down to only having half a dozen or so projects on the go at one time (not counting finished tops waiting to be quilted, that is). I'll never be one of those people who works on one thing at a time, and that's it, but it did get a little out of control for a while, so I'm trying to get back on top of it a bit!






And in other news today - I have added some rooftops and railings to the beach huts - and Wil has reminded me that this challenge isn't due until May 1st, rather than April 1st, which is a bit of a relief. I still hope to work on it a bit in the upcoming week or two, rather than waiting until the end of April, but at least there's some breathing room.


And on the right, some bits from joggles.com - some collage sheets for an upcoming ATC swap organised by Lenna, some German scrap suns, and a few charms - mostly Egyptian ones, as I know that there's at least one upcoming arch for my arch swap which has an Egyptian theme.