Second annual Art's Meow art show and sale

The second annual Art's Meow art show and sale is this Sunday, October 12. I've contributed these two quilted "kitty art" pieces. Both pieces are improvisationally pieced, raw-edge appliquéd, and free-motion quilted with a small hanging sleeve on the back.

"Cat-itude"
Quilted Kitty Art
18" x 18"

The Art's Meow Art Show and Sale celebrates our area's community cats as well as the 6th anniversary of the Cat Clinic of Chattanooga. Sales of the cat art goes to Wally's Friends to support low-cost spay and neuter services for the cats at local shelters and clinics.

"Did I hear the can opener?"
Quilted Kitty Art
15.5" x 18"

I spoke with Dr. Marcia Toumayan, the owner of the Cat Clinic, today and she said there is a wonderful variety of mediums and price points in the art that will be at this year's event. Last year, I contributed this piece. Here are close-ups of this year's quilts.

Kitty Art for "The Art's Meow," detail of free-motion quilting.

Kitty Art for "The Art's Meow", detail of free-motion quilting.
Thread: Wonderfil 50 wt. variegated cotton.

Kitty Art for "The Art's Meow", detail of free-motion quilting.
Thread: 40 wt. variegated cotton by YLI.

The Art's Meow takes place at Uptown Art, Cherokee Blvd. and North Market, from noon to 4 pm on Sunday. Come out and celebrate, purchase feline-themed artwork made by area artists, and support the local community kitties! There will be cake and ice cream, and staff members from the Cat Clinic will be available with educational information and handouts about feral cats. A painting party will immediately follow the celebration with step-by-step guidance from Uptown Art personnel so you can create your own special painting of a modernistic cat. No painting experience is required.

Sounds purr-fect! Hope to see you there.

Kitty quilts: improv pieced, free-motion quilted, and kitty approved

My scrap bender project has been kitty-tested and kitty-approved!

Lucy checks out the kitty crate quilts. He approves! They are ready for distribution.

Done all by machine, the kitty quilts I made for the Cat Clinic were quite quick and easy to make. 

25" x 27" kitty quilts for crates at the Cat Clinic.

These little quilts are a great size (approximately 25" x 27") for practicing free-motion quilting designs using your home sewing machine.

The backs are flannel, so they are soft and warm. Here are a few all-over filler patterns: circles, swirls and free-form feathers...

stars and headbands (or paisleys).

 I also did double loop-d-loops and waves.

The bindings—using the pre-cut 2.5" strips—are also attached by machine. (You can get quite good at binding by machine after you do a half dozen or so of these mini quilts!) The batting is a quilt-shop quality Hobbs Tuscany low-loft poly, for easy care. After washing the finished quilts, they did shrink about an inch in both dimensions, so allow for this when you trim the quilt sandwich before binding.

Bindings done by machine.

I took a prototype over to the Cat Clinic earlier to check the size. Dr. Toumayan showed me another item the cats really like—cat beds. You can see that this one is well used and washed often. So, if anyone knows of a pattern for something like this—or ones the cats can crawl into—let me know.

Another item needed for the cats at the Cat Clinic.
Anyone know of a pattern or a quick-sew technique for making these?

Half a dozen kitty quilts are now at the Cat Clinic.

Let the scraps fall where they may

I finally had an available Saturday that coincided with a guild meeting of the Modern Quilt Guild in Chattanooga. So, I decided to go. The meeting was well attended and the program was on free-form piecing. 

The program was a hands-on exercise with the goal of providing new quilters—or quilters new to free-form piecing—with an opportunity to experiment with this technique; a popular patchwork technique that is found in many of the modern style quilts.

Fabric scraps of various sizes were sorted into bags for free-form piecing.

Various fabric scraps were sorted and put into brown bags according to their relative size. Apparently, the guild members had been collecting scraps over the last several months with this exercise in mind because there were four work areas set up in the room. Through a blind draw, scraps from the "small," then "medium," and if necessary, the "large" bag were assembled with no forethought or angst over choosing a layout or pattern. The randomly chosen scraps were sewn together intuitively to form patchwork (note, I didn't use the word "block").

Free-form pieced patchwork.

These are a few of the pieces that came from the group I was with. These pieces are much like the "crumbs" patchwork that I referenced in this blog post. It's all about using random bits and pieces of fabric and sewing them together without a specific plan, with no heed to coordinating fabrics, styles, colors or prints, and just letting the bits fall where they may. Free-form!

Gwen Marston calls this technique "liberated quiltmaking" in her books of the same name. Whatever you call it, it's easy sewing and fun patchwork.

Revisiting basic block patterns

My friend, Shannon, at Fabrics N Quilts, recently wrote a blog post about giving herself some ME sewing time. With all the card-sending, cookie-baking, gift-buying and box-wrapping the past few weeks, I've been wanting to run away to my studio and do some "just for fun" sewing, too.

Chain piecing 3.5" fabric strips.

Shannon is working on "crumb blocks" using bits from her scrap basket. I decided to revisit a few basic block patterns—simple construction, quick cutting, and mostly petal-to-the-metal chain piecing.
Starting with: the snowball block.

Snowball blocks.

The humble 4-patch. 
Here I used small prints, tone-on-tones, and several solids in shades of gray and brown.

4-patch blocks.

 And, the versatile half-square triangle.

Half square triangle blocks.

Piecing these blocks was so relaxing, therapeutic and I felt very productive. Go ahead and stitch some of those basic block patterns and you'll know what I mean. I'll post soon on how these blocks develop.