Fat Cat Quilts

In The Pink

Because it's Wednesday, and I'm feeling giddy that the week's half over, I thought I'd dig into the archives and pull out one of my favorite pink quilts to share with you. Plus, one week from TODAY, our first cruise ship comes, and that just tickles me PINK.

I haven't worked with pink all that much. It's not that I don't like pink, because I'm a girl, and I really do. But I think, in the far back recesses of my brain, I worry that collecting pinks would inhibit my collecting of reds, which I love even more. However, about seven years ago, I scored a smokin' find at a garage sale that changed how I looked at pink forever. A fellow quilter from our group was moving to Anchorage, and decided to lighten the load a bit with a moving sale. Always looking for a bargain or an adventure, I pedaled over to her house early that Saturday morning on my bike. I think I might even have still been wearing my plaid Mickey Mouse pajama bottoms. It's a small town. We do that. (This is where most of my cultured city friends would roll their eyes and sigh disgustedly, but hey, I moved to a small town and I'm all about committing.) Fashion faux pas aside, my efforts were rewarded. I found two big black garbage bags full of fabric scraps. And by scraps, I mean anything ranging from little pieces, to orphan blocks, to full-on, folded yardage. And here's the best part. For FIVE BUCKS! I was ecstatic! Do you know how many days of entertainment two black garbage bags of scrap fabric provides? And all for five dollars. I'm a cheap date, plaid pajamas and all.

The moving quilter, however, shared an enthusiasm for pinks very similar to how I feel about reds. So as I spent the next few days sorting and ironing (yes, I iron my scraps. I can't help it.), my pile of pink was turning into a mountain of pink, while all the other colors of the rainbow were mere anthills. I had a veritable cornucopia of pink scraps and no idea what I planned to do with them.

Enter Mesha.

Mesha is the sister of my college roommate. Mesha is the embodiment of pink. Mesha was engaged.

So I set out to make a pink wedding quilt for Mesha. I picked out a pattern and proceeded to cut ALL of my pink scraps into the squares I needed, thinking I probably wouldn't have enough and would need to go buy some more pink. The cut squares made an impressive pile, for sure, but I still worried it wouldn't be enough for a king sized quilt. I began sewing anyway.

 
This is Mesha's pink wedding quilt. It is a monster. It's seven by nine rows. I just started sewing those pink and white 4-patch blocks and kept right on sewing until I had used up my whole pile of pink squares. I didn't even use half the blocks in this quilt. I have enough to make two more of these puppies. What was I thinking, cutting up all those pink scraps? Holy toledo, I need more pink-lovers to get married.

 
My favorite part of this quilt is the border. It's from a Pam Bono book, but I can't remember which one. I think Quick Rotary Cutter Quilts. Or maybe it was MORE Quick Rotary Cutter Quilts. At any rate, Pam used this design in a cross-hatching pattern and it was quite pretty. I thought it would make an excellent border, to make an otherwise rather ordinary scrap quilt look more interesting. In the end, it's still one of my favorite quilts, made better only by knowing it now lives with one of my dearest friends.

PS. You should have seen me trying to get home with those bags of scraps on my bike. Where is America's Funniest Small-town Videos when you need them?

*pink flower photo from www.colourlovers.com

Halfway There

I'm halfway through my Tagalong Schnibble quilt. Better hurry, only four more days left in the month. And then May is here. Can you believe how quickly 2010 is passing by? We're nearly halfway through! I'm just loving the bright colors in these fabrics from Breath of Avignon. They are so cheerful! This little quilt would be so cute rolled up and tied with a red ribbon, tucked into a picnic basket for summer.

Laura at Paws 'n Tails Quilts  sent me the Sunshine Blog award last week. And it's been sunny here in Skagway ever since. I'm afraid to give it away to anyone else because I'm really enjoying the warm weather. We hit 61° today! I enjoy so many fun quilt blogs and I could never narrow it down to just a handful of favorites to pass this on to. So I'll tell you what I've done. I've updated my blog list over there --------> with all the blogs I visit the most. I enjoy each of them for different reasons, and love all the inspiration and motivation I soak up when I spend the afternoon catching up on all of them. So if there's some new ones over there you may not recognize, click on it and go meet a new quilter. And thank you to Laura for thinking of me!

 
This appears to be Tigger's favorite new spot, as he's been camped out here regularly for the past week. I don't know if he's trying to stay away from Butters or if he just likes the batting remnants he's curled up on. It makes me kind of nervous though, because as I'm sewing, he swishes his tail and it has come dangerously close to the needle a couple times. That would be a hard lesson learned, I tell you.

Have a good week!

Home Sweet Home

 
This weekend I went to Juneau to meet Keith at the airport. He's been down in the lower 48 for the past month and I was very excited he was coming home. And not just because it means I don't have to empty the cat litter box anymore.

Juneau is 92 miles away.....by water. There are no roads to Juneau. I took myself and the car on the ferry Friday afternoon, and by 9pm, I was shopping at Walmart. Keith didn't fly in until Saturday evening, so I had the whole Saturday to shop. First stop: Costco. No trip to Juneau is complete without the obligatory trip to Costco, where we load up on bulk toilet paper and 25lb bags of dry beans. One begets the other.

 
This is the ferry we took to get home Sunday morning. Very EARLY Sunday morning, might I add. Mornings and I aren't exactly the best of friends. But the universe was out to cheer me up, cause as we were waiting in the staging area with our car, we looked over at the ferry and there was a big bald eagle sitting on the railing. And to the right of it, was this crazy raven sitting up there on the railing, just squawking his little brains out at the eagle. I don't know what was going on so early in the morning, but that raven had worked up a really big mad and he was telling off that eagle like there was no tomorrow. When we got on the ferry, we hurried up to the solarium to get a better picture and the raven was mysteriously missing. I'm pretty sure the eagle ate him for breakfast.

 
After my run through at Costco, where I may or may not have indulged in one of those awesome, foul-breath-inducing hot dogs, loaded with hot mustard and sauerkraut, I hit two of the three quilt shops. One was new to me and what a GEM! Martina's Fabricsstarted out as an online store, and recently opened a real live store. I have to just get this out....I love this shop! It's small and cozy, chock full of all the latest from my favorite designers. Martha owns the shop, and Bonnie, who works there also, makes most of the store samples. They were both just so friendly and fun. Even when I was pulling fabric out of the pile they were cutting for models/kits. I couldn't get enough of the place and everywhere I looked, I was picking up more fun things. First off, I got my hot little hands on one of the Moda Bake Shop Samplers, which I've wanted for a very long time.

 
And then I added an Aster Manor jelly roll with some coordinates that I just loved in that dreamy red. I'm not generally a jelly roll-buying kind of quilter, but they were out of layer cakes and I needed to take something from this line home with me. In fact, I've already gone online and found myself a FQ bundle of this line too. I just love it. Aster Manor is taking no chances on becoming a future Favorite Fabric Friday that is impossible to get my hands on. This jelly roll is already burning a hole on my sewing table. I've never sought out any jelly roll patterns before, so I'd love any suggestions for favorite patterns. I can't wait to dig in.

Then I found the reproduction section, something a bit new to me, but one that I am quickly falling in like with. Again, I think it's all those sumptuous reds.

I picked up some other stash-building odds and ends and some little gifties for Maria, who is awesome and offered to feed the monsters cats while I ran off for the weekend.

It was a fun little getaway. Good shopping, great quilt shops, my favorite used bookstore, good eats, and we even spotted three humpbacks on our ferry ride home. It's late and I'm tired, so I'll leave you with some fun pictures of Martina's Fabrics. They have a Mini Quilt-of-the-Month program going on right now, so lots of itty bitty quilts to drool over.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Kinley's Baby Quilt

I haven't had a chance to take pictures of anything I've been working on this week. So I dug up a quilt I made a few years ago to share with you. This is a baby quilt I made for my friend's daughter. They live in Utah and come to Alaska for the summers. I wanted to do something Alaskan, without using any of the obvious Alaskana prints. This is what I came up with. A quilt that definitely says "Alaska", with a menagerie of popular things found here...the Big Dipper and North Star found on our state flag, moose, King Salmon, cruise ships, whales, and crabs. I designed the quilt myself, with the exception of the paper pieced moose and the whale. The moose is a pattern designed by a local gal here in Skagway, and the whale is from Janine Holzman of Sitka, who is an amazing quilter often featured in Quilter's Newsletter.

The slammin' salmon has a 3-D little fin that folds out. The crab has button eyes, as well at buttons for the port holes on the cruise ship. And since it's for an Alaskan baby, it's backed in flannel. Warm and cozy for Alaska or Utah.

Public Service Announcement

I am here to tell you that Red Velvet Cake freaks me out.

 

I mean, is it really right that it's this color? It looks like a blood clot. There is something really unnerving about an entire bottle of red food coloring. An ENTIRE bottle. I don't use that much food coloring in a whole year. And I do a lot of baking. And what exactly is RED supposed to taste like? It has one measly tablespoon of cocoa in it. Why bother? And vinegar! It has vinegar in it? Is this normal? I've never made it before, so I really have nothing to compare it to. But I'll tell you this...from here on out, I'll now compare everything to THIS. And then even my worst culinary mishaps will look appetizing. At the very least, they won't look like something that just got stabbed in a dark alley.

Oh! And the cupcakes are for my friend Allison's birthday today. I'm taking them to work in hopes that everyone's tongues turn red.

SUNday

 
Today the sun came out. In all it's bright and shining glory. It even got up to 48°, the current high of our impending Summer. It slanted through the living room windows, creating broad triangles across the carpet. Tigger tried like crazy to make himself triangle-shaped to fit his roly poly body in the warm sun. As the sun moved, he crept slowly along with it, worshiping the bright rays as it traveled around the living room. Then I whistled and woke him up and he's been glaring at me ever since. Talk about holding a grudge. Sheesh.

 
I got one cat off this table runner long enough to quilt and bind it. And as soon as I laid it out for a photo, the other cat claimed it. What is it with this table runner? Every single time I lay it out, BAM! There's a cat on it. I mean, I know there's usually a cat on everything, but they definitely gravitate towards this particular runner quicker than average.

First one.

 
...and then two.

I also picked out my charms for my April Schnibbles...Tagalong. I'm using two packs of Breath of Avignon. I love the bright colors, the petite french prints, the stark contrast between the white and the brights. I think it'll be perfect for those little 9-patches.

 
More show and tell to come! I had a busy weekend. Have a good week!

 

 

Favorite Fabric Friday

 
Folklorique by Fig Tree Fabrics for Favorite Fabric Friday.

Say that ten times fast. I dare you.

The first time I saw this line of fabric was in a tidy little bundle at the local quilt shop in the Yukon Territory. They also had a model made out of it and I think I might have stood there and fondled it a tad beyond what would normally be considered acceptable behavior. Thankfully, no one was looking.

The model quilt was the heart pattern from this book.

 
 
Now, there's no part of me that leans toward the cutesy hearts and bows sort of things, so I was surprised to find myself head over heels for this quilt. So much that I bought the book on the spot. Right there in Canada. But I didn't spring for the FQ bundle. I know, I make no sense. Luckily, this line of fabric is still fairly easy to come by. (Praise you, Ebay) And by that, I mean I have come buy much of it. A FQ bundle (or two?), a FQ bundle of the coordinating wovens, several charm packs, a jelly roll and a huge selection of half yards that I couldn't pass up simply because they were on sale for $2 each. Really, at that point, it should be a felony to NOT buy it. Even the most devout fabric dieter would cave. 

One day, I still have fleeting plans to make the heart quilt. Promise. Does anyone hear a 2010 resolution in the making? And since that will not deplete my Folklorique stash, I will continue my search for additional patterns that tickle my fancy and make myself a couple more. I will never tire of this dreamy fabric. After all, this was my first foray into the Fig Tree world and my (quilting) life has never been the same since. Besides, in my new effort to decorate my home with seasonal/holiday inspired quilts, this will fill the Easter/Spring slot nicely.

 
While I was in Florida, I came across this great basket pattern and just loved it. I've put it in my box of Folklorique fabrics and I think after I make the heart quilt, this will be a good one for the leftover scraps. I was pretty excited to run across it on Sherri's blog a couple weeks ago. Check it out HERE. Isn't it just a great quilt? She mixed a few lines of Fig Tree fabrics, which I thought was a great idea.

 

In the meantime...I HAVE been sewing this past week. Just not on anything fun. Little domestic projects like hemming pants, sewing black-out curtains for a friend and piecing batting leftovers. Nothing exciting enough to blog about. Oh, and my light bulb burnt out on my sewing machine. I knew the day would come. I just didn't know it would be so hard to track down a replacement bulb. Really, why must there be 27 different sizes of sewing machine light bulbs? Shouldn't this be a universal one-size-fits-all sort of thing? The funny thing is it burnt out in the middle of me sewing the black-out curtains. Hah!

I have big quilting plans this weekend of finishing up some little projects that just need a bit here and there. I started back to work this week at the railroad, and with the summer tourist season quickly encroaching, my quilting days are numbered. I need to make the best use of the rest of my free time and finish up some things. If all goes well, I'll have some show and tell Monday morning.

Have a good weekend!

Cinnamon & Nutmeg

 
I have been collecting brown and teal batiks for a while. Ever since Hoffman's Havana colorway hit the shelves and became the newest "it" thing. Not excessive yardage, but fat quarters and half yards of an excessive variety of different prints. Most of the prints tend to run on the larger end of the scale, making it somewhat difficult to find a suitable pattern. And so they've sat in a neat little pile on my sewing table. I'll say, they do make a nice little centerpiece all on their own.

Now, a few months ago, a friend of mine showed me this pattern called Cinnamon & Nutmeg.

It's in this book, More! Laps From fats by Ellen Replogle.

 

My friend really liked this pattern, but I have to tell you, nothing about this quilt blew my skirt up. I'm not a pastel-y, girly-girl, "isn't that sweet" type of quilter. So I nodded my head, thanks, but no thanks, and quickly dismissed it. I'm guessing my friend did too, cause I've never heard another thing about it.

This weekend, since it was a four-day weekend for many Canadians, many of our quilting friends came down from the Yukon to shop at the quilt store. This is always so much fun. They are a hilarious group of ladies and we love to watch them fight over bolts of fabric. Seriously. We joke that the quickest way to sell a bolt of fabric is to put it in the hands of our Canadian quilting friends. Because as soon as one of them brings it to the cutting table, it's a sure bet that three of her closest friends will need some too. Sometimes, even I need some.

Many of our Canadian quiting friends brought some flimsies for show and tell. This one was by far, one of my favorites. Pardon the absolutely terrible, horrible, no good, very bad (anyone know where that's from?) picture. I didn't have my camera so I whipped out my trusty phone. Trusty because it's always there, not because it takes trusty pictures.

 
I immediately took to this quilt and couldn't get the words out of my  mouth fast enough to ask her about the source of the pattern. She was so excited that she actually had the pattern with her and pulled out the More Laps From Fats book to show us. And there it was. Cinnamon & Nutmeg. I was blown away how different it looked with a darker fabric used for those boxy frames, instead of the lighter fabric used in the book. And Ellen Replogle, if you're reading this, I'm NOT ripping on your book. I love your book. I OWN your book! I was just so close-minded, I couldn't see past the pastel colors long enough to imagine it in another colorway. Which is really weird, actually. I was an art major in college. I normally have no problem doing that. I think I'm losing my mojo. Yes, that's it. I am definitely losing my mojo.

And now I know exactly what I am going to do with my pile of brown and teal batiks.

Just as soon as I finish two UFO's.

 

A Tale of Two Kitties

Sunday night I pulled out this table runner to quilt. I laid it out on the ground and went downstairs in search of batting. When I came back up, Butters had claimed it. She wouldn't budge. I even tried bribing her with treats. To prove her point, she called Tigger in for reinforcement.  He wasn't the least bit interested in the table runner, but rather quite enthralled with my measuring tape.

 
 
I gave up on the quilting altogether and watched Extreme Home Makeover instead.

 

Happy Easter

Have a wonderful holiday weekend!