Purple cow and Hidden Gems

Purple cow had her ear surgery and is now quite happy to join the last week of January's Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. She also thought I should mention that she is wearing yellow as an accessory to her purpleness because it is purple's complementary color. This is following a method that Cathy of Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilts has used for many of her RSC projects.

I also had to make pinwheels with half square triangles because I love the Hidden Gems quilt that Chantal made over at At the Corner of Scraps and Quilts.

And here is Molly one year ago. At this point she was a solo kitten because her brother Typhoon (now Buddy) was at the local animal shelter working very hard not to get adopted. 

Graph Paper

My process for making an animal design is based on graph paper. I usually have a general posture in mind before I start drawing, but I always pull up Google images of real animals for a reference. I am not replicating them in any fashion, but this let's me know some of the true attributes of an animal...such as that the cow's ears extend out straight from the head, or the nostrils are at the ends of the nose, not in the middle.

I then break the rules if I need to. Prey animals (versus predators) have eyes that are set further apart. This is not as cute. So for the cow, I tried several different eye locations. I opted for more realistic and less cute for the cow.

The next step is breaking the pattern down into sewing units. I try to keep the largest possible areas without seams and you know I love flip triangles more than half square triangles. I do a lot of that figuring on graph paper, but I do make adjustments as I sew the first block. Once I have the first block sewn, that becomes the model for future changes.

Here you can see that I had a lot of problems with the chicken pattern. These drawings are nothing like the final options I eventually used and made into blocks. These drawings look more like generic birds. I was worrying too much about the feet. Once I tipped the wing, I could get rid of the feet and had a speedy chicken.

Molly is sorry that you had to put up with all my boring blather and she would like to reward your patience with an adorable cat picture.

Purple cow

Please comment responsibly. Cathy at Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilting commented that she "had never seen a purple cow." And then this happened. And it gets worse. As you can see, purple cows are so inbred that the left ear is malformed and is barely attached to his head. Yes, it can be corrected with surgery and luckily my seam ripper is already warmed up.

Pigs in a Blanket

Pigs in a Blanket is finished. And I submitted it for consideration at the MidAtlantic Quilt Festival. For the online entry form, they request a picture of the full quilt as well as a detail shot.

Here's the detail shot. Molly thinks that her tail shows a subliminal smile that will ensure the quilt is accepted. I think it provides evidence that I didn't make the quilt on my own and that I coerced unpaid labor to do most of the work.

Binding Deadlines

The piglet quilt is quilted and now I am sewing on the binding. I am hoping to finish it in time to meet the deadline to enter it into a quilt show. Deadlines are great motivators. Unfortunately, because I have so much help in the sewing room, I get over confident that I can get more done in less time.

For example, here is Molly showing me how to make binding. In fact, she offered to provide a tutorial for your learning enjoyment. To cut your binding, she recommends carefully laying out the fabric before cutting the strips.

You really need to pay close attention to every step in the process with no distractions.

Oh well...never mind.

Purple Sheep

Here in my sewing room, the sheep are sporting their full winter coats although we have had a very mild winter. They chose purple to celebrate January's color over at the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge.

They like to see what everyone is making out of cotton. The more the merrier.

Meanwhile, Molly is writing a book called 50 Favorite Uses for an En Provence Quilt Top.

En Provence Quilt Top

I am spending most of my time hand quilting the plaid bunny quilt and machine quilting Pigs in a Blanket. But in between I did manage to get the borders onto my version of Bonnie Hunter's En Provence quilt. I hadn't made enough of the background four-patches...so I came full circle having to complete step 1 again to finish the quilt top.