Cat's Comfort

I bought this quilt as a kit during the Sew Sisters Stuff Your Stocking event last year. At the time, I didn't have specific plans for it, but the price was right. This year I found out that the sister of my best friend from high school had died of ALS. In lieu of flowers, I decided to give her something of more lasting - and comforting - value. The quilt was actually called "Best Wishes," but I hardly considered that appropriate for a sympathy gift, so instead renamed it Cat's Comfort. She, like me, is a cat lover, but can't have them because of allergies. While you can't tell from the picture above, the teal fabric has cat head silhouettes on it, and the white fabric has line drawings of cats. 
When I purchased this kit, I assumed it was hourglass blocks with a wide black sashing. No! This is what the block was actually supposed to be: cut a large square of the black fabric and smaller squares of the white and teal fabrics and sew them on the diagonal on opposite corners of the black square. Then trim off the excess.

I hate wasting fabric, and that was wasting a LOT of fabric. So, I decided to do the hourglass blocks instead. And it's a good thing I'm good at math because I had to do a lot of calculating - not only the size of the hourglass block, but how wide and how long the sashing needed to be. My quilt ended up a little bigger than the dimensions stated on the kit, but I still had a generous amount of fabric left over, which is good because I also bought a jelly roll in the Meow fabric line. 

Mystery had to try out the quilt while it was on the longarm - you can see his calling card in the above picture.

I quilted it using a Marathon thread, with good success. That was my first time trying Marathon and I'm happy with the price and the performance. The pantograph is Quilting for Pawz - Catz by Patricia Ritter from Urban Elementz. Isn't it awesome? I could never hope to do this freehand with the longarm. I doubt I could even do it freehand with a pencil! That's one of the things I really love about pantographs - being able to quilt something appropriate to the theme of the quilt that I would not be able to do otherwise.
Unfortunately, this quilt took a back seat to Audacious and I didn't get the binding done until mid-December and wasn't able to get it into the mail in a timely fashion. The recipient goes to Mexico every year for the month of January, and I don't want to send it until I know that she's back home. So, I will await mailing it until her return. 

My Beloved's Vineyard

Very challenging to find a place to take a picture of a queen-sized quilt that shows the whole quilt

I started this quilt 2 years ago and it was supposed to have been for my sister Judy's 65th birthday. She'll be 70 in August. But I am gradually closing in on my goal of creating a quilt for every sister. Janet, Cindy and Judy will now have one, and I have the fabric for the quilts for the remaining two sisters. Plus a zillion other quilts. Currently I'm working on my very first signature quilt for a nurse that retired. 

This is just the beginnings of it. I'll have to be careful to whom I give these, or every health care worker I have ever known will think they need one when they retire/resign/move...

But back to Judy's quilt: if you want to know more of it's story you'll need to read my post, "Un-squaring Square Quilts." I've had the quilt top done for nearly 2 years. And I actually had some rental time booked on the longarm to finish it. Then I injured my back, was off work for a few weeks and I was in no shape to do the quilting. Especially when, as a renter, I would have to do it all in one shot, and I estimated this quilt would take me 8 hours to quilt. 

After the back injury healed, I tried to book my already paid for time on the longarm, but was not getting any response from the rental studio. And really, I didn't want to pay for it again at another studio (the first studio still owes me 8 hours of quilting time). I kept hoping that I would be able to get the basement renovations done and purchase my own longarm. That didn't happen until September of 2018. Then I had problems with the flooring and had to wait until that was taken care of before I could get to this quilt.

Vineyard Pantograph from Urban Elementz

Once I was finally able to start quilting it, I,unfortunately, was having major tension issues. I would set it to where I thought it was a good tension, but the thread kept breaking. I don't think I finished a whole row without at least one thread break. I kept reducing the tension and thought I was finally going to be able to quilt, but then suddenly it was too loose and I had to rip out loops of thread on the back several times. For polyester thread, I had a lot of lint accumulating in the bobbin area.

I went through a lot of thread with all of the re-starts I had to do. 

Look at all of that thread in the garbage, and the quilt is only half done!

I thought maybe it was that particular spool of thread, so when it ran out, I was hoping that maybe a new spool would be better.

I tried 3 different needles, hoping that would make a difference and finally resorted to the manual and reset the tension at least three times. It would work for a short period of time and then start breaking or looping again. Plus the rear display was not working consistently, which is not good when you primarily quilt from the back. I had no end of headaches, messaged the company, emailed the vendor, spoke with them in person, spoke with them on the phone. Just by sheer persistence, I eventually managed to finish the quilting

and took the longarm into the vendor for repair. In spite of all of my stops and starts, I think that the quilting is quite attractive. And I'm so thankful it's finished.

Mystery assisted with the binding

and was very helpful. 

Now, I just have to find a box that's the right size and get it mailed to my sister. And hopefully, the repairman will be able to find what's wrong with my machine and remedy it quickly. 

Trialling the quilt on my bed

Grandma's Kaleidoscope Garden

This didn't start out as a quilt. It started out as more of an experiment. I had enrolled in Craftsy's Quilted Kaleidoscopes class, but hadn't done anything with it yet, just glanced at it briefly. I should have done more than glance at it before I started experimenting. Then I might not have wasted so much fabric fiddling around with this. 

Here's how it started: 

I had no idea what I was going to do with this. But it gradually evolved until I decided that I was going to make it into a quilt. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, I wasted a lot of fabric and my LQS didn't have any more of the one I had started with. I had to decide how I was going to complete the quilt since I didn't have sufficient fabric to make enough hexagons. So, I tried to find fabric that would coordinate with the original fabric and would work as hexagons. 

I'm not sure how well I accomplished that

but it still grew up into a reasonably decent quilt.

And grow it did. I don't know if I hadn't measured it properly or had neglected to measure it at all, but somehow I assumed it was somewhere close to 70" square (though I knew it wasn't exactly square). So when I did the backing, I only used 2 widths of fabric. That nearly cost me when it came to quilting it. 

I had been a little too generous at the top end (most of my lap/nap/throw sized quilts are only 60" x 60", so there normally would have been plenty to spare) and by the time I got to the bottom, I had to remove the red snappers and pin the backing to the leader so that I could squeeze in enough backing to finish the quilt. 

Less than 1½" from the bottom of the quilt top to the inside edge of the selvage on the backing! Thank God I had just enough. As it turned out, the finished quilt measured about 74" x 78".

Because this quilt was composed of hexagons, I wanted a pantograph with hexagons, so I chose Honeycomb from Urban Elementz.

The thread was Glide Cleopatra. Such a gorgeous colour!

I wasn't entirely thrilled with how the quilting looked. It's very challenging to make straight lines on a longarm. But once it was finished, I was reasonably pleased with it. 

And Mystery helped with the binding.

To come up with a name, I thought about Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt, which is entirely composed of hexies. But mine was composed of kaleidoscope hexies, hence "Grandma's Kaleidoscope Garden."

Go Wild!

I call this quilt "Go Wild!" 

Originally it was supposed to have been two separate quilts, or at least two. I started with the flowered fabric which, if you look carefully, has lions, tigers and leopards. I had plans for that fabric. 

Then I found the panel that featured 6 different African animals (Mystery doesn't qualify...) and added the striped fabric as I felt it was a good match for the panel. Then, as I was mulling it over, I recalled that I had a couple of animal print charm packs.

Then I tried to figure out how I could fit them all into the same quilt. I finally decided to use 12 inch squares of the flowered fabric alternating with the animals from the panel. Unfortunately, not only were they not 12 inches square (something more like 11-1/4"), but they weren't true to grain. So I added the striped borders on the tops and left sides of each square to square them up to the right size. If I'd added them on all four sides, the border would have ended up being only about 3/8" wide and the difference in width to square them up would have been more obvious. 

Since I was using the charm squares as a border, I needed to make the quilt top measurements before the border evenly divisible by 9" (or 4-1/2", the finished size of a charm square), so that it would come out even. So I added a strip of 3" squares to the top and bottom of the quilt. These squares are the flowered fabric alternating with the print from the border of the African animals panel. I also had to make some charm squares from the flowered fabric as I didn't have quite enough for the border with the two animal print charm packs I had. 

The final border was of the striped fabric. This is the first time I mitred the border. It really wasn't that difficult. I used my 45 degree triangle ruler to cut it. 

I wasn't sure what I was going to use for a backing - something that went with the theme of the quilt. I looked around my local quilt shop - they were having a 30% off sale - and couldn't decide on what I felt was right. I considered a waterfall fabric - very pretty, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. Then I remembered that I had seen a piece of tiger print minky in their remnants, and I decided to give minky a try. That was another first for me. I dashed into the store 10 minutes before closing on the final day of the sale and got this minky fabric. They keep their minky in the basement, so that's why I only saw a remnant of the tiger print in the main part of the store. They also had a leopard print, which would have worked as well, but I decided to go with the tiger. 
I did some online research on using minky. Some people had had disastrous results, and refused to ever try it again. I did speak to one of the staff at Sparrow Studioz and they just confirmed what I found on the internet - that  you must load it with the stretch running crosswise, not lengthwise. We also did some pinning, which we normally don't do on the long arm. But minky is slippery compared to cotton and the batting doesn't want to stay in place. 
Also in my research I found the recommendation to prewash your cottons, including the batting as minky doesn't shrink. So the cotton needs to be preshrunk in order to avoid problems when you do wash the quilt later. As I had charm squares as part of this quilt, and I wasn't going to wash them individually, and I had already started the quilt top before I decided to use minky, I just finished the quilt top and prewashed the whole thing. I didn't have my batting yet, so couldn't prewash it. However, I did have some polyester fibrefill batting at home and decided to go with that, since it wouldn't need prewashing. One of the things about minky is that it's quite heavy compared to cotton and I didn't want a quilt that I felt was weighing me down. So the polyester fibrefill was a better option as it weighs much less than cotton batting. 
After quilting it successfully on the long arm (I can't remember the name of the pattern, but it's leaves and twisting vines and the staff member assisting me said that was the first time she knew of that that pattern was being used), I had to decide on a binding. I had more of the flowered fabric, but felt that a self-binding using the minky backing would give it a better look.

Before I even had a chance to stitch the binding, the quilt was cat tested. 

And approved. Both cats had a liking for it. 

I'll be honest: when I was first laying the pieces out and deciding what was going where, I wasn't really sure if I liked it. But it's grown on me and I love it now. I might have to fight with the cats for possession of it, however. 

Machine Quilting with Cats - A Photo Essay

Both of my cats, but especially Mystery, like to be in the middle of whatever I am doing. I'm sure those of you with cats can appreciate this. I actually had to give up on a jigsaw puzzle I was working on. It was virtually impossible to get any of it done with a cat sitting in the middle of it. And somehow Mystery knew, even if he had been sleeping in another part of the house, whenever I sat down to work on that puzzle. Occasionally he would sprawl all over it, knocking pieces around and onto the floor. It just wasn't worth the hassle.
Machine quilting? Yes, they like to get involved in that, too.

Did you actually want to work on this project?

I'm taking a machine quilting course through Annie's Crafts and this is the sample project that Mystery is testing. I decided I need more practice with FMQ before I finish it. Once it's finished, I'll write a separate post about it and the course. I was thinking it might just become a table topper. Or more likely, a cat mat.

I left it on the table, hoping the cats would lie on it instead of the quilt I'm working on. So, yes, here is Mystery being quite cooperative, for the moment. Tinker was at first too.

 But really she needs to be up close where she can get petted with my Machingers gloves.

Tinker really isn't satisfied staying in one place, unless it's really close to me. 

 Mystery's back. He can't supervise the job well enough when he's sitting on that other project, so he had to get up closer.

 I think I like this one, Mom. It's comfy to sleep on...

And closer...

How did I get so far away?

The fabric was bunching up by the cat, so I grabbed the quilt on the opposite side of him and tugged both the quilt and Mystery farther away.

I had to turn the quilt around, so he went back to the sample project for a bath. This is the back side up. It was actually supposed to be done in solids, but how could I resist some beautiful batiks?

 Yes, he had to move right up close and personal again.

I guess I'm finished quilting for now...
By the way, that's my grandson's quilt. Since I haven't had enough practice with free motion quilting, I'm doing it all straight line with my walking foot.

Tinker freaked out - again!

This time I was already in my bed, snuggled down, waiting for sleep to overtake me. Not a pleasant experience when your body is settling into a state of relaxation and suddenly a one-sided cat fight erupts in the living room. I'm quite sure Mystery had been in the bedroom with me, so once more, I knew he wasn't responsible either for the noise or being the catalyst for the noise. Both Mystery and I headed for the living room to discover Tinker at the window again, only this time she wasn't caught in the curtains. Then she headed for the window in the dining room. I looked out both windows but couldn't see anyone or anything unusual. Whoever or whatever it was, was obviously long gone. It's not like it's the first time another animal has wandered through our yard, so why she chose to make such a fuss about it 2 nights in a row is beyond me. If it happens again tonight, she might have to sleep in the basement. I swear that cat is schizophrenic. I told you she is weird.

Tinker has a temper!

Last night as I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, I suddenly heard a cat yowling and snarling and growling in the living room. Mystery, who had been in the bathroom with me, and I both headed for the living room to see what was going on. Now, I admit that Tinker has never really liked any other cat but Midget. She will growl at Mystery for the mere offense of being on the same bed as her, and swat at him as he walks by. But Mystery had been in the bathroom with me, so I knew he wasn't the catalyst of the commotion. Could I have inadvertently let in a neighbourhood cat or some other creature? I didn't see how it could be possible, as I had not propped any doors open during the day, but what else was causing the uproar? Arriving in the living room, I realized that I did not want to confront an intruder - feline or otherwise - without being able to see clearly, so I headed to my bedroom, grabbed my glasses and put them on. Back in the living room, I approached Tinker, who was in front of the picture window. Not seeing any other creature, I noticed she had claws on both front paws caught in the curtains. Tinker has always had problems retracting her claws and has gotten stuck in furniture, carpet and clothing. I released her and she promptly returned to her usual self, her usual voice, rubbing against my leg and begging for attention, which she got. Note that I do not say "normal self" as Tinker is not normal, she is weird. I have known my cats to growl at another cat that they saw outside the window, but never to create such a hullabaloo. And the picture window was about a metre above the ground, so I doubted another cat outside the window was the cause. Was she having a temper tantrum because she'd gotten both front paws attached to the curtain and couldn't release herself? That wasn't fear she was displaying, it was hostility! Tinker has been known to call out in fear or uncertainty in the middle of the night. I'm not sure if she wakes up and doesn't know where I am, so she starts calling out in distress. As soon as I call to her, her voice changes to her usual voice and she comes running to the bedroom. Not sure why she can't figure out, after living with me for 9 years, that if it's the middle of the night, she can probably find me in bed. She does this occasionally during the day as well. And, once again, when she hears me respond, she changes to her "happy voice" and comes running. However, when she was hung up on the curtains, it was not her distress call she was using. Maybe she thought that nasty curtain was attacking her and she was trying to retaliate. I am still shaking my head over how she managed to get both front paws caught in the curtain. Anyway, we all survived. 

Midget

One day, as I was sitting in my home office, I suddenly heard a cat calling in distress. The fridge was making an incredible racket (I think it was in distress, too, as it died not long afterwards), yet above this din, I was able to hear a cat, or rather a kitten as it turned out, crying. I rose and went through to the kitchen and looked out the window. There on the sidewalk in front of the house was a young kitten, meowing forlornly. And thus Midget became a part of my life. That was in the year 2000.
Midget was a highly intelligent cat with major cattitude. What joy and unconditional love he brought to my life. He has been there for me through some of the worst times in my life - my divorce and all its ensuing emotional fallout, the disastrous rebound relationship, estrangement from my daughter, the death of my brother, living in the Stinky Towel Motel for 3 months... He has been a wonderful friend - sleeping under the covers with me, licking me when there was no one to kiss me, and just making me feel special to another living creature when there was precious little else to make me feel special. He was very forgiving, even about "the rebound" who didn't like cats in the house (next time, the cats get to pick my dates). 
I never picked Midget up much because he had a painful tendency to hold on with his claws, but in late July, I happened to pick him up and was shocked by how much weight he'd lost. With 3 cats in the household, I wouldn't really notice if one wasn't eating much. He'd hadn't really appeared to be ailing much, but cats hide their suffering well. Blood tests ruled out diabetes, renal failure and thyroid problems, but revealed an alarmingly high white blood cell count. In the absence of any evidence of an infection, the most likely diagnosis was cancer. I enjoyed his company as much as possible for what little time we had left together. He continued to climb up and down the stairs, though I kept food, water and a litter box on both levels so he wouldn't have to, until the end. However, watching him, I realized he was suffering more than he let on. I wept every morning and evening and often in between, knowing that I would soon be losing one of my best friends.
Last Sunday evening, he wanted to be let outside, so I went out with him, along with his 2 feline siblings. He didn't go far, mostly just resting in the yard. Then I picked him up and carried him around for what I knew would be his last visit in our yard. Monday afternoon, I took him in for his final visit to the vet's. They were incredibly compassionate and understanding in the vet's office. They had me prepay so that I wouldn't have to return to the waiting room after his death. They had already asked me if I wanted to be with him (yes) and what I wanted to do with the body (take it home). They wrapped him in a fuzzy blue blanket (Midget loved fuzzy fabric) and took him to insert an IV catheter, then returned him to me and took us to their conference room. This was a much more comfortable and less "clinical" room than the exam rooms. They allowed us some time together to say our good-byes. Then the vet came in and gave the injection and Midget passed peacefully to his rest. They provided me with a cardboard casket to bury him in and let me keep the blanket to keep his body wrapped in. Then they let me out the back exit so that I wouldn't have to go through the waiting room. 
I dug his grave in the side yard, under the shade trees, not far from my bedroom window. Expending the physical energy was therapeutic for me. Next spring I intend to plant lily-of-the-valley and maybe a fern on his grave. Meanwhile, I painted "Midget 2000-2011" with some flowers and grass on a big rock for his gravestone. I'm no artist, but he at least has something to mark his place.
I'm crying as I write this. It is so painful. He has left an aching void in my life and I miss him terribly. 
While there is nothing in the Bible to say that our pets will be in heaven, there is also nothing that says they won't be there. The Bible does say, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9. So, I believe God will give me my cats back in heaven, and I'm looking forward to seeing Midget again.