Fat Cats in the City is Done

I finished stitching the binding down on Fat Cats in the City on Christmas Eve. 

my quilt holder hubby

up close

This is the 2nd completed Fat Cats in the City quilt I've made.  The first one was for a special friend, Ms. Betty. 

Ms. Betty with her quilt

The pinks in the quilt are different, but everything else is the same.  Here are some up close shots of the cats.  Each cat is wearing a different tie.  I couldn't get a good photo of the hand quilted cats in each of the brown squares.

I started the Fat Cats in the City quilts back in 2011.  The quilt tops were made pretty fast, but I stalled on doing the hand quilting on them.  Betty's was finished in 2013, and Kay's languished until this November. 

 I finally took a photo of one of the board game quilt tops that is done.  All of the circles and stars are hand appliqued, along with the semi-circles in the center square.  There is still another star to be appliqued on the center square, but I want to quilt the semi-circles before I add the stars.  I'll add the stars when they are quilted and bound.  I still have 3 more board game tops to stitch together (six board games in all).  One of these has to be finished before March, since I've entered it in my large quilt guild's quilt show.

20" x 20" board game quilt top

I came up with a new idea to use with all of the striped circles I've been making.  Some of them will become a shadow box quilt.  Christmas afternoon I cut out the non-fusible interfacing and the black squares for the 117 black circles I need to make.  I got the circles traced onto the black and pinned the interfacing on yesterday.  They are now waiting by my sewing machine to be stitched for the next part.

117 black circles waiting to be stitched

Hopefully I'll get some stitching done on these after work today.

Thanksgiving and Stitching, etc.

I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving.  It was just hubby, our oldest son and me for Thanksgiving.  We still ate well.

our Thanksgiving feast

I've been busy stitching even though I don't have much to show to prove it.

The ladies ministry at church hosts an ornament exchange each December.  The lady in charge of decorating decided that we needed matching table runners as part of the decorations for the tables and I was drafted to make them.  She provided the white fabric with the gold ornaments, another lady provided the batting and I provided the red with silver snowflakes fabric for the reverse side.  Thank goodness she just wanted solid fabric on each side.  I did some simple stitching with my walking foot.  Here are the six finished table runners (showing both sides).

red on one side and white on the other side

A special friend offered to quilt both of the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings quilts for me.  I made labels for both quilts, including a separate label that lists the names of the blocks, in order, including the 'extra' block on the back of each quilt.  Both of these quilts have the binding stitched to the front of the quilts.  Now I just need to stitch the labels onto the back along with the binding.

both quilts with the labels listing the blocks

I finished almost all of the hand stitching for the board games (no photos, sorry).  Now to finish the last parts by machine, then stitch the parts together. 

I'm also doing some hand quilting on the 2nd Fat Cats quilt.  I made both quilt tops back in 2011.  A friend asked me to make one for her, and I finished that quilt in 2011.  The 2nd quilt top was made when I made the first quilt top, but I never finished it.  It will be finished before Christmas and gifted. 

Fat Cats quilt (being hand quilted)

Back in September I found a roll top desk at Goodwill.  The roll top desk is MUCH larger than the computer desk that I'd been using for the past 20 years.  We had to take everything out of the computer room and completely re-arrange everything to make it fit.  It took longer than expected to re-organize everything (one of the reasons I haven't had much stitching to show since early September).  I took everything off the walls (mainly hubby's ball cap collection) and we've finally hung some of my quilts in the computer room.  I still have space for a couple more wall hangings.

roll top desk with barn quilt and String Star above it

Elephant quilt to the right

Crazy quilt by the printers

Hubby also hung my wooden scissors above the door frame.  You can see our Christmas tree (lights but no ornaments yet) and our Alaskan Malamute, Ratchet.

wooden scissors

Now to get back to stitching!