New Quilt Blocks

I've been busy this week catching up on a block challenge for one of the Yahoo groups I belong to. The challenge is to make one block for each month that features a cat and represents that month in some way. We had snow in January, so I used yo-yos to make a snowcat and stitched it to a snowball block.

February's block features a heart for Valentine's Day and uses a pink fabric that I used in a project I was working on in February. The cat fabric just looked like Valentine's Day to me.

March's block is a 3-leaf clover made without a pattern - I just haphazardly cut some white rectangle and square shapes and sewed them to green squares to make the leaves. It's fun to ignore all the fussy rules once in a while! I drew the cat on a small piece of fusible web, cut it out and fused it in place. The stem is embroidered.

My oldest cat, Wylie, was born in April many years ago, so I searched my cat fabric stash for a black and white tuxedo cat. The kitten in the center of this block was the best I could find. The block features a 4" Puss in the Corner block as the center of an 8" Puss in the Corner block.

What I Learned Today

It's said that we should try to learn at least one new thing each day. Here's three things I learned today:
1. If a grocery store employee is walking around the store with a box of cookies from the store bakery and offering a cookie to adults as well as kids, say "no thanks." I said "yes" today and about broke a tooth on the cookie. I'm guessing it was at least 3 days old, probably older.
2. Don't put a cookie in your pocket and then forget about it for 12 hours. I did and I now have a greasy pocket.
3. Wrap cookies in paper towels for several hours before eating them. If fabric can absorb so much oil from a stale cookie, paper should absorb even more from a fresh one. And less oil means fewer calories, right?

Twin Star

On TV last Saturday, Fons and Porter demonstrated how to use the basic component of the Twin Star block to make a twisted ribbon border. Like them, this was a new method to me for making this border so I had to experiment. I was watching the show in my studio shed and didn't want to dash to the house to work the measurements out on the computer first, so I picked up some fabrics, cut a 3" square in fourths and went where it led me. I ended up with a 10.5" block (finished) - not exactly a common block size but I had fun. I'll add more log cabin type rows to make it big enough to make a pillow.

Later, I went to my computer and drafted a pattern for a 12" block. I like this block, but I think I like the other method of making the twisted ribbon best. Getting those little triangles to line up to make a square can be a bit tricky.

More Surprises

As I continue to sort through stuff, I find a few surprises. Today, I found some photos of me taken in first or second grade. Black and white photos were quite common back then. :-)

And I found some of a litter of kittens one of my cats had several years ago. It's about time for this year's feral kittens to start peeking out at the world, but so far I haven't even heard any tiny meows. Since the cold weather stayed around for so long this year, I'm wondering if this year's kittens will show up later than usual. We don't really need more kittens, but they sure are cute! (My females are all spayed now, btw. And the ferals get spayed whenever I'm lucky enough to catch one.)

I also found a sample of a crazy heart block I designed years ago that I'd totally forgotten about. I pulled scraps from a box to make the 4 blocks it took to make the sample, and I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out. Next time, I'll have to try it with a controlled pallette of fabrics. This is what an EQ (Electric Quilt) mock-up looks like:

If you'd like to play with this foundation pieced block pattern, let me know.