Graduation Day and Dear Jane

Today was graduation day for Kitten University's star pupil Cyclone. She was so accelerated in social skills that she graduated midyear ahead of her slacker brother and sister. The shelter is having an adoption event, so it made sense to try and get her into her forever home so she can take over management of her new family by the New Year.

Unfortunately, bureaucratic snafus do occur and the shelter posted this group shot of Litter Storm as Cyclone's publicity photo. This should serve as a stern warning to all of you who have let people take photos of you during your "camping out with your family in a cardboard box" phase.

This puts Cyclone at a disadvantage against her competition "Janet Wood" who also came up for adoption today. Janet is a full month younger than Cyclone. Hopefully, potential adopters will notice that Janet is being held with a stranglehold grip in an attempt to contain her awful personality.

 

And in full disclosure I should probably also mention that this fellow is up for adoption at a different shelter. So far I have resisted going out to that shelter to meet him. But if Cyclone is not adopted quickly, I may have a lapse in my resolve.

 And on the off chance you came to this blog to see something other than kittens, here are some postcards I made recently. Yes, Vicki W. can be a bad influence, if by bad you mean spurring one on to make something to share with someone else. Vicki has been sharing the results of her postcard factory recently, and I went back to Vicki's December 3, 2014 tutorial to help me make mine.

And playing catch up, here is the Dear Jane block I5 or Maria's Majesty. For this one, I inset the somewhat circular patch of the turquoise Kaffe Fassett print using Dale Fleming's Simple Circle technique. That is, I sewed that part by machine. I then appliqued the four orange peel shapes on top.

And here is Dear Jane B9 or Tinker Toy. I took some liberties with this one. The original Dear Jane used some striped fabric, fussy cutting and lots of inset seams to make her block. Following the spirit but not the construction, I fussy cut and appliqued the large cross with the square hole in the middle. This looks like it may have been a lot of sewing except, really, I only had to applique the small square in the center and then just the innermost corners because the rest will be caught in the seam. Last but not least, I added the four flip triangles to the corners.

And for my applique, I do use freezer paper templates and an iron to prepare the fabric. I just spritz it with water, however, and forego the step of using spray starch and glue.