So what's the secret project you may be wondering?
It's a small wall hanging that I originally saw here and after some tracking and transatlantic emailing with its quilter, found the original designer here. Now, I don't speak Dutch but fortunately these ladies speak English and were very helpful in getting me this pattern.
The whole thing is a rather simple paper pieced design. The cat portion consisted of 3 pieces with the addition of two vertical strips along the sides. The outer border was also paper pieced (woooo pointy triangles!). I appliqued the tail after stabilizing the fabric with a very thin interfacing. It kept unraveling while I was trying to stitch it down, so some interfacing and basting spray solved that problem!
The cats' colors mimic those of Jo's cats. The black cat, Annie, is a little b-word that hates everyone but Jo. The smaller cat is Merle, a little guy that began hanging around her house. As I said before, I tried this with another set of colors (white with scroll work and hand dyed blue) but the blue bled and the seam unraveled...so that was disappointing. Then again, I actually like it better with the beige and red.
Since my quilting skills are still limited, I only stitched in the ditch between the outer border and the inner cat portion. After binding it, I made a label with its title ("Annie & Merle"), attached sleeves for hanging, packaged it with some PSU Silly Bandz (that I found at Dick's Sporting Goods for 25 cents! Score!), and mailed it away.
your cats are very cute, i collect cat patterns so i'll have to put this one into my collection. Good luck with your projects
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