Fat Cat Quilts

Clifton

So this summer, I adopted a puppy from our local Paws and Claws animal shelter. 

I had no idea what I was in for.

Not. A. Clue. 

I've been owned by cats for years. And while I don't consider myself totally inept, my cats have never prepared me for dog-ownership. Wow. Somedays, all I have to say is it's a good thing he's cute. 

Clifton is an energetic little black lab that came from Hoonah, AK. His sister is also in town, although we don't know her. Apparently, there was no love lost between the two, cause he never asks about her. 

Some of his favorite hobbies are:

hiking
playing in any body of water
rolling in dead salmon (my personal favorite)
barking at bears
not chasing balls
eating everything

And everything has included an entire three-layer chocolate cake from the kitchen counter, a hairbrush, a pair of underwear, several cubes of butter, entire pieces of firewood, a roll of duct tape, and a flat dead mouse he found in the middle of the street. 

He's terrified of trains, which just blows my mind. He's definitely in the wrong family for that and needs to buck up. The first time we took him on the train to go hiking at Laughton Glacier, he wouldn't even climb the stairs. We had to carry him up, and then he just sat under my seat shaking the entire time. Everytime he hears a whistle blow, which is often, he tries to cram himself under the bed or table. 

But all his neurotic tendancies aside, he's just a little ball of love. He loves everybody and just wants to be loved. He's such a little snuggler. Night time is cuddle time, and there's nothing he'd rather do than settle in on the couch with his head in my lap, watching me read. We have many fun adventures ahead of us. First up...SNOW!

 

Christmas Reds

Our little quilt group meets once a month for a mini-quilting retreat. We eat good food, work on all sorts of projects, and catch up on the scuttlebutt around town. This weekend, I worked on some lap quilts that will be finding good homes this Christmas.

All those reds I washed and washed are getting put to good use. I am making two lap quilts simultaneously, both using these same reds in 12" Ohio stars, but each with a different border. You can see now, with the miles and miles of white, why I was so concerned about potential bleeding. Even after three washes, I'm still a little nervous. I had picked out two different white-on-white prints, one for each quilt, but somewhere along the line, I made a mistake hunting and gathering and didn't have enough of the snowflake print I started using for this quilt. I had a stack of FQ's, and I think I counted them as half yards. At any rate, after I had eleven of the twelve stars made, I had to substitute in a different white snowflake print, which was a thinner fabric. I hate how it looks right now as a flimsy, but I'm hoping once it's all backed with a snow white batt, the situation will resolve itself. You can really see the difference in fabrics in the sashing. 

The snowman border print is an older Benartex piece I've hoarded in my stash for years. It came in both blue and green colorways, and I love that they aren't cartoony. They're just little old fogey snowmen, wrapped up in kicky red scarves, happy as can be. It's the perfect fabric for a grown-up holiday throw. 

Here's a peek at what others were working on this weekend...

Have you ever seen so many Harley Davidson T-shirts?

Christmas Is Coming

This is a table runner that Chamaine and I picked charms squares out for a couple years ago. In a giant bin of six-inch charms at Pine Needles Quilting in Gardner Village in Utah. One of my favorite quilt shops. I could have dug through that bin of charms for days. As it is, I came out with quite a good little pile.

A lot of the prints were larger scale, which I hated to slice up. I held on to this little stack for quite a while, trying to come up with something to do with them. Last fall at a quilting retreat, I finally settled on a very simple runner that let the fun prints speak for themselves. The top went together quickly, but it wasn't until just recently that I got the binding finished. It's almost a little I Spy table runner. To keep it from looking too simple and boring, I added some red ric-rac around the border. I think it's fun. And festive. 

 

What I'm Working On...

I mentioned earlier I had some projects I'm working on for Christmas that are bumping my Halloween Lollipops quilt down a few pegs until after the holidays. 

This is a pile of blues and browns I pulled out for a scrappy zig-zag lap quilt. The browns I picked out are really not that putrid, greenish baby-poop color. They match the brown background in the BYU focal fabric really well, actually, but the lighting in my sewing room isn't very friendly to browns at 11:37 at night. It's all half-square triangles, so it's mindless sewing while I catch up on back episodes of Survivor on the CBS app. Seriously, whoever came up with that app wins my love forever. 

I'm also working on a red and white project. I love the crisp, clean look of a red and white quilt. Who doesn't? But I lose sleep over the bleeding possibilities. So I picked all my reds and washed them ahead of time. Twice. The first time, I threw in three Color-Catchers and they came out pretty dark.

So I ran them through again with two more sheets. Still pretty dark. 

Amazing, isn't it? All that red dye was just waiting to ruin my quilt. Wash and dry, wash and dry. Trim threads and iron. I want to wash and crinkle this quilt before it goes to it's new owner, and I didn't want to take any chances of red ruining the day. 

This is what will be taking up my free time in the next few weeks. I'm a "cut-everything-all-at-once" kind of quilter, so that's what I'm working on right now. Cutting out the pieces for three simultaneous quilts. Once I get started putting blocks together, I'll show and tell.