These 12 kitty quilts are heading out the door. Seven are going to the kitties at the Cat Clinic of Chattanooga. Five are headed to New Jersey to two of my associates who have adopted or rescued kitties.
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| Twelve completed kitty quilts. |
Stash-buster quilts
Over the past few weeks, I've been stealing a few minutes here and there to purge a bottomless scrap pile and spread a little holiday cheer to the owners, helpers, and caregivers of our fuzzy friends.
Some of the fabrics nearest the top of the scrap pile were flannel holiday prints. These tops were fun to make and got me into a festive spirit.
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| Two kitty quilts made with flannel holiday fabrics. |
The red thread used for the quilting as well as the zigzag stitch on the machine binding added a colorful contrast to the holiday themed fabrics.
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| Contrasting red thread for quilting and binding. |
Improv patchwork
Anything goes when making kitty quilts! This is a quiltmaking project where I not only get to use a variety of fabrics, but I can combine them with leftover patchwork bits and work with improvisational piecing.
Sometimes a color palette emerges from the scrap pile, or the fabric prints are from a single fabric collection, but most often it's an "everything but the kitchen sink" conglomeration. This kind of improv patchwork is exciting, spontaneous, and certainly stress-free... which is what I love about these quilts.
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| Improv piecing with scraps and leftover patchwork. |
A free-motion quilting opportunity
I always tell my free-motion quilting students that charity and kid (or kitty) quilts offer a great opportunity to practice their free-motion quilting.
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| Scrappy kitty quilts are good stash-busters. |
On a few of these quilts, I brushed up on free-form feathers.
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| Back of a quilt showing free-motion feather motifs. |
Feathers are flexible, fast, and forgiving. They travel well, fill the space effortlessly, and are easy to combine with swirls and other quilting motifs.
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| Free-form feathers on batiks. |
Machine binding is the way to go on these quilts. Since discovering the magic sticky tape, stitching the corners by machine is a breeze.
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| Attaching the quilt bindings by machine. |
A warm and happy holiday season
So now that the kitty quilts are finished, the next best part of the process is to give them away! Stan Leigh, one of our outside kitties, wishes all our kitty friends a warm and happy holiday season.
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| Stan Leigh says Happy Holidays to all the fuzzy ones. The kitty quilts are on the way. |
