Cathedral Window Kitty Quilt

Day 283: "Desperate times call for desperate measures," and living in pandemic days has necessitated breaking one of my life-rules, the one which says, "You cannot have two projects of any one type going at the same time. One must be finished before another is begun." In part, I can justify why I have four quilts in progress currently, two of which are in the "hand-quilting" phase and two which are in the "piecing" phase. Mousie's grandmother's quilt replaced Kevin's son's on the frame because it is a time-value project. When I reach the point where only two blocks remain to be stitched, I'll shift back over to Daniel's. The orange quilt is at the point where it requires a trip to the fabric store, and since that won't be on the calendar any time soon, I started a "kitty quilt" to replace the one I donated to the Nisqually Land Trust.

Cutting fabrics is time-consuming and certainly not the most exciting part of putting a quilt together. At this size, the quilt requires 168 squares of the background fabric (light aqua) and 288 squares of white. The white squares form the "windows," and must be folded and pressed on the diagonal so that the folded edges can be turned back over the prints. A rotary cutter makes this part of the project go faster. Mind your fingers while you're ironing those points, though! There are other methods to ensure accuracy, but I find this one works best for me. Next, pin the white triangles to the background fabric and stitch them in place. Then join the squares until you have a strip either as wide or as long as your quilt will be. The outermost squares only have one white triangle applied, leaving half the background fabric to form a nice border around the quilt. Once two strips of squares are made, you're ready to join them. This is where the "meets" get a little tricky. The points of the triangles should come together perfectly, so accurate pinning is mandatory. Join strips until your quilt is the desired size. Then the real fun begins: adding the prints. I like to cut the prints 1/2" larger than the white and aqua squares so that I don't have to fuss with the corners where stitching can sometimes be very close to the cut edge. Once you have the prints stitched in (hand-work!), you're ready to batt, back and bind. I rather suspect I'll have this one done before I finish any of the other three.