Cats still on the prowl.....

Still plugging away on my Halloween cats.

Here's chevron cat.

This cat made me dizzy.  

The rest are being prepped.  

Then there will be the superstitious 13.  

Stay tuned!

13 Halloween cats (or...just the beginning of them)

Who doesn't love "dots"?

I think these are glow in the dark pumpkins.

This one reminds me of a friend's cat, Doug.

Only thing is that Doug gets caught in the blinds and not a spider web.  

Passing time......

Passing time has a bit of a double meaning for me right now.  

We put my mom in hospice at home this past week and have been staying by her side daily.  My folks live in a one bedroom apartment, so there is little for my sister and I to do while we care for mom (92) and watch over dad (94).  

After 11 days, I am going a little crazy not having anything to do with my hands while we sit and wait.  Even though we are caring for all their daily needs, there is a lot of free time in between.  

I bound my charity quilt before this all started. 

Today is the first day I had a break from sitting there, so I decided to put my stars into rows.

Next time I can sit at a machine, I will get my rows together and I will have this top complete.

I need some handwork and since all my UFOs right now are quilts that need to be quilted or require a whole lot of prep to get something going (like my Dear Jane), I pulled some Halloween fabric out and started cutting out a project that I have been gathering fabric for.  I have been wanting to do this for quite some time.  I don't expect that it will be done by Halloween, but at least it feels right at the moment and seems somewhat easy since my mind is in such turmoil right now.  

I managed to cut out 13 cats from freezer paper at dad's yesterday.

So today I pulled the fabrics that I had collected 

and some from my stash and then paired them up (bottom one is the background of each block and the top fabric is the cat.

Oh....and I even found some backing that I had bought when a local quilt shop was closing. I even bought the stripe for the binding. 

I may tea-dye this fabric since there will be creamy colors on the quilt top.

This is the pattern.

from this book.

  

A wonderful blogging friend was going to send me the cat drawing, but found this book which is out of print and sent it to me.  Thank you Sharon in Washington.  

So, I started cutting out the two pieces for each block.

Black background will have an orange cat and the orange backgrounds will have black cats.  I am going to try my hand at reverse applique. 

This will give me something quick and easy to do while I am at mom and dad's.  

So, please say a little prayer for me and my family.  It's a sad time, but also a blessing. 

Taking a break from the stars......

I have had a quilt on the longarm for way too long.   Ran into a problem using pink thread on a busy fabric that had pink in it.  Therefore I couldn't see where I was going.  

So, I made Jamie Wallen's side light .  You can see the video on his YouTube site.  

It helped tremendously.  

This is a charity quilt made by a guild member and they ask for people to quilt them.  I took this one  to practice my free form feathers.  (they only have 100 that need to be quilted!!!)

I worked in the "dark" with only the side light so that I could see the shadows of where I was and where I was going.  I highly recommend throwing one of these lights together rather than trying to adjust lamps here and there.  Quilting is supposed to be fun....not so much work. 

Here are a couple pictures of the backing. 

Ok....back to my stars.  I have started putting the rows together. It won't be long before it is a top.  

Happy quilting.  

OH MY STARS!!!!

Never thought I would see the day!

Here are 6, 7 and 8 of the last dozen.   

Then tonight I got 9 thru 12 done.  

Of course making these stars didn't come without problems.

grrrr.....

But now all 110  (5 inch) stars are done

Doesn't look like much piled up like that.  

Now to lay them out into a pleasing arrangement.  

yeah!!!