Wow, it's been a long time

I was a little busy this year, with the whole first year of grad school taking up a lot of time. But now that it's summer, and I've started sewing again, I thought I'd start updating the blog. Hopefully I'll get to do even more sewing this summer.

This time, I thought I'd make something for myself. I saw this blog and I wanted to try it. Big Kitty wanted to help out, and I had to be careful not to sew his tail into my project:

My first circle came out pretty well. I have different colors planned. In addition to the purple, I have orange, green, blue, and possibly a pink/grey.

Hopefully I'll have more to show soon!

Another 1 year milestone

This time, it's not sewing related. One year ago I went to the local animal shelter and brought Little Kitty back home with me! I can't believe it's been that long. Here he is the first day at home, when he was approximately three months old:



Big Kitty seems to have adjusted to Little Kitty's presence, and will even occasionally let Little Kitty cuddle with him. Even if he only tolerates it for a few minutes at a time.




And sometimes Little Kitty cuddles with me. I especially like it when he sleeps with his paws over his face. He's sleeping on my lap in this photo.


Little Kitty loves sitting in the window to watch the dogs, cars, and people go by. I'm pretty sure that's the right order.


He also loves sunbeams. Unfortunately, with winter fast approaching, I don't know how much more he'll get to enjoy the sunbeam.


Thanks for being a part of the family, Little Kitty!!

Slow progress

Surprised to see me in his favorite napping spot.


Looking for a good place to nap.


And they're both settled in for the day.

Hot Pads

During my move, I managed to lose at least one of my hot pads, and the others that I have are kind of grungy. So I decided to make some new ones! These were really quick and easy to make (which is pretty much the only type of project I can handle right now) and I really like the colors. I just used fabric and batting, so they won't protect against anything really, really hot, but they're good enough to take stuff out of the oven. Which is all I need anyway.

Here are the front sides:


And the back:


I originally thought I'd like the pink and blue one better. But I ended up liking the orange one even more - it's just so bright and cheery in my kitchen.

I also don't know why the colors are so different in each photo! The first one is much more realistic. I'm going to have to take a look at what's going on with my camera settings.

Pets on Quilts Show

I was procrastinating by reading through some of the internet sewing blogs that I like to browse and I came across this online quilt show called "Pets on Quilts" on this blog. I was excited to see that so many people have the same kind of "helpers" that I do, which makes me feel a little less like a crazy cat lady. So I decided to enter my photos as well, since that's basically what this blog is about. However, as many of my photos are of different types of sewing projects, I have to define what I consider a "quilt." Basically, if I've made (or are making) a blanket/quilt that has a pieced top, batting, backing, and binding, I'm calling it a quilt for the purposes of this post. Here are my favorite photos that fall under that criteria. All of these photos are from the past year, as I just completed my first year of sewing!

This is my favorite photo of Little Kitty. For anyone coming across this blog from the show site, I adopted Little Kitty from a shelter last summer. He had been abandoned with his brothers on the side of a road. In this photo, I'd only had him for a month or two, and he was 4 or 5 months old at the time. He's napping on a baby quilt I made for a friend, and I love this photo because it really makes me want to cuddle with him. It's hard to imagine that this sleeping kitty is the same one who wakes me up at 5 am every day.

Several months later (as evidenced by March Madness on the tv), I made a patriotic quilt for a friend who just became a U.S. citizen. Little Kitty decided he'd rather nap on it than let me quilt it. Although I preferred this to the destruction he did as I was finishing it...

Luckily, this went to a household with two other destructive cats (who I heard decided the quilt was theirs pretty immediately), so the recipient was very understanding. I know the photo to the left isn't technically a photo of a cat on a quilt, but it is a photo of the result of a cat being on the quilt.



Now, Little Kitty shares the apartment with Big Kitty. I've had Big Kitty for six years, and he finally seems to be adjusting to Little Kitty's presence. He definitely liked being an only cat. I know that again, this isn't technically a photo of a cat on a quilt, but it's a cat on quilt batting. So it's a cat on a quilt in progress. Big Kitty loves to sleep on batting. Little Kitty loves to eat it. I definitely prefer Big Kitty's approach.


Here is Big Kitty awake and standing on the beginning of a star quilt for my niece. It's still in progress, and hopefully will be done while she's still seven :). She picked out the colors and the fabric. I think she has great taste. Big Kitty thinks so, too. He and Little Kitty love this one, and I have to hide it from them so it doesn't end up covered in black and gray fur. Luckily I've invested in some lint rollers that help...but it's hard to get rid of all of that fur! And lastly, here is Big Kitty chilling on the quilt top in progress (before I hid it from him).
You might notice I have no shots of the two kitties together on a quilt. I do have an occasional photo with the two of them together, but here's what usually happens: Big Kitty lies down on a quilt/piece of fabric, Little Kitty comes over to cuddle with him, Big Kitty lasts about five seconds before he becomes exasperated with Little Kitty and heads off to a different spot. Little Kitty either takes over Big Kitty's place, or follows Big Kitty to the new spot and the process starts over again. They're not siblings, but they sure act like them!

Thanks for visiting, and I hope you like the photos!

Some sewing for myself

After spending the day wrestling with SPSS to figure out some stats that are probably above my head right now, I decided to take the night off from working on the star blanket and do some sewing for me to cheer me up. And what's cheerier than Christmas? I think this will end up being a table runner. Or a wall decoration. It depends on how many blocks I end up making. But I figure if I work on it sporadically starting now, I might actually get it done by the holidays. The pattern is called "garden fence" and I saw some photos of it online (if you search "garden fence quilt" through google images you can see lots of photos). I'm using pre-cut squares for the middle designs, so I did the math based on that and figured out how to put it together on my own. I like how it's starting out.

The colors are a little off - I think the nighttime lighting in my apartment skews the colors a bit. They're brighter in person. And there will be white stripes in between the blocks, so they don't have to line up perfectly.


Here's Big Kitty with his ears back, annoyed because I'm encroaching on "his" space. He's sitting on some of the other squares. And the scissors. I don't see how that could possibly be comfortable.


What I like about sewing, is that even when it's not finished, there's still a tangible product. I worked all day studying and looking at stats, but I don't have a product to show for it. Even though this sewing project isn't finished, I still have a physical thing to make me feel like I've accomplished something today.

One year!

I'm a day late on this, but I spent yesterday cleaning out my office so I was a little too worn out to do anything else. Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my sewing machine! Thanks, Mom and Dad, for the wonderful present. Did you really think it would actually get a full year of use? I'm glad it did.

Just to celebrate, I'm putting up a few of my favorite pictures of sewing with the kitties. Hopefully I'll have more progress on the blanket to show soon, but with the start of the semester looming, it's hard to find as much time now.