Prototype

Day 281: My readers may recall that I made a Cathedral Window quilt of kitty prints a few months back which I was not entirely pleased with. The "meets" where the white frames join were less than perfect, and because I quilted it with the sewing machine, the stitching was not as accurate as I would have liked. I donated the quilt to the Nisqually Land Trust for their auction which, because of the pandemic, wound up being cancelled (they're planning to hold it virtually, but details are not yet available). In any event, I wound up without a "kitty quilt," and wanted to make another one, this time doing the quilting by hand.

In the meantime, a friend had found a kitty print she thought I could use. She sent me a yard of it, and I didn't even have to measure to see that the darling cat faces were going to be too large to fit in the frames. Cathedral Window is easy to adapt to a different size, so I bought a 5" quilting ruler and set about to develop Plan B. As my mother used to say, "A thing worth doing is worth doing well," so I decided that the prototype should be made in such a manner that it would serve some function, perhaps a pillow top, so I made it four squares by four squares which gave me room for five prints. The half-frames on the sides were filled in with a coordinated solid.

I've learned a few tricks along the way. For one thing, I changed up the construction method a bit to make it easier to join strips of squares. I also determined that the center prints need to be 1/2" larger than the base and frame fabrics, i.e., the light blue and white fabrics are both cut as 5" squares, and the center prints are 5 1/2" squares. I like the look of the larger windows, and yes, now Patty's kitties will fit the frames. Hand-stitching the prints looks much nicer, and for all the wrestling I did to sew the first quilt on the machine, it's easier too, even though it takes longer. This, however, is the prototype...just an experiment to be sure there were not going to be any little surprises or foibles to work out. And obviously, I'm not going anywhere any time in the foreseeable future.