Batik Quilts that Cats Love

Using this Easy-to-Follow DVD Mentor, Your Quilt as You Go Project can be a Beautiful Family Heirloom.   Working with scraps of fabric and small pieces of batting is easy when you take it one block at a time. Using this fine quilting resource, you will know more than 4 different methods of completing a Quilt as You Go project. Choose the one that fits your style and the look you want for your finished quilt. Read more - - -

 

With the theme of the quilt block patterns for August 2007 being geese and birds, I’ve included an example of a border using a variation of Flying Geese.

This quilt is made from small batik squares that many quilt shops sell in a pack.  These were all cat squares.

Each kitty square is 4 inches, and I surrounded it with squares and half-square triangles forming a type of Pinwheel Block (called Eccentric Star).

Then, using the colors that were in the background of the kitty squares, I made a series of half-square triangle patches.  Initially I was going to simply surround the center with the half-square triangles as one of the borders. 

However, I mis-calculatd how many I would need and had several extra patches.  Rather then putting them in my stash, I decided to continue to use them in the border. 

By placing a solid blue strip between the rows of half-square triangles, and using the same color patches on the other side of the solid blue, it created a Flying Geese affect in that border – I call it Broken Geese.

The cornerstones were created to fill in, since I couldn’t figure out a good way to line up the Broken Geese in the corners.  All of the elements in the quilt relate to cats (birds [the geese], mice in the very corners, fish blocks that surround the mice, and pinwheels – pure entertainment for cats).

Once I knew the size of the cornerstones, I needed to widen the border, hence the diamond shapes of purple.  And the outside black border was intended to frame the quilt.

Lessons Learned
This quilt uses all hand-dyed fabric.  As much as I love this quilt, it gets used as an example of – you need to wash out all of the dye.  Each time this quilt gets wet, more of the blue and purple bleeds into the surrounding patches and onto the backing fabric.

Planning – yes, with better planning, some of the components would have been different.  However, my lack of planning often allows me to be more creative, since I need to solve a problem.

When you lay a quilt on a bed, a cat will surely find it:

 

Happy Quilting!

www.How-to-Quilt.com
www.TheQuiltingCoach.com
www.QuiltBlockLibrary.com

Penny is a quilter of more than 25 years who seeks to interest new quilters and provide them with the resources necessary to create beautiful quilts.

This article courtesy of http://www.How-to-Quilt.com.
You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author name and URL remain intact.

©2006-10, Penny Halgren

 

 

 

 

Web www.How-To-Quilt.com