Kitties

Taken with my cell shortly after dinner at a pho place

The outside temperature has been around 40C (104F) lately and I am determined not to expose myself even a little bit to the hot sun. The quilts are all put away. Even my quilt-addicted kitties are rolling up their mini quilts so they can sit on the cool, bare surfaces. Yes, they bundle up their quilts with their forepaws when they don’t want to use them. Hot summer days are perfect for rummaging through photos. I did exactly that and found a few that I would love to share.

This is a photo of all the bits and pieces of discarded index cards. I had to restart quite a few of them because of mistakes and bad or unexpected results. The fanned-out stack of cards on the right is where I practised drawing circles over and over until I could draw them without having the marker leaving a darker dot at the start and stop points. I couldn’t bear to throw those cards away. When I get frustrated of my ineptness, they serve as a reminder of the age-old saying – Practice Makes Perfect.

Recently I got a set of lovely soap moulds along with a set of essential oils from my DH. The oils make the house smell amazing while the soap cures. Now I have enough moulds to make a double batch of soap.

I used the Panorama feature of my phone to take this picture. I am at the bottom left corner, being pinned down by these two kitties. I was positively cooking under the bulk of the quilt and two hairy cats. No wonder it took me so long to finish hand-sewing the binding of the Greekness quilt!

This was a few months ago. I couldn’t sleep, so I worked on the binding of the Castles In The Air quilt. I was glad of his company in those wee hours of the night.

Purchase Aran Star Pattern

Lastly, Fort Worth Fabric Studio featured my Aran Star pillow on their blog. I am stoked!!

Thanks to my friends Susie and Lara, I entered this post to Pets On Quilts 2015

I hope you enjoyed photo-rummaging with me. If you are in the area of this extreme heatwave we are having, I hope you stay safe and cool.

Until next time,
-Soma

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Star patterns in my Shop

I will start with a little background story to this quilt. A few years ago while I was volunteering at a shelter, Mr. Montague Wilberforce joined our little band. At the time he was a sick, stressed-out, untrusting, biting middle-aged man. However, over months of care and a lot of patience, he became a healthy, relaxed and loving gentleman who now purrs all the time. He also likes nothing better than to spend a lot of his day with me.

Except, there is the little factor of a gigantic Maine Coon boy named Mr. Tuffleberry who has been spending his days with me while I work since he was a tiny little kitten. He does not like to share his bed. So Mr. Montague comes by now and then in between his romps around the house to cuddle and sleep on my lap for a while. Since he loves to be very close to his humans without being on the lap the whole time, he spends the rest of the day with my husband in the next room while he works.

I really love quilting for my kitties. I made the 2014 Pantone Challenge quilt for Mr. Tuffleberry while he was recovering from a surgery. Now it was time to make a personal quilt for Mr. Montague as well.

My knitting stars quilt patterns – Aran, Argyle, Vale and Fair Isle

Star patterns in my Shop

I had made these vintage-themed star quilt blocks last year. Having read up on the history of British knitting, I based these patterns on traditional knitting designs. I made the Argyle and Vale stars first from a set of Grandma’s House fat quarters, and then a mistake led me to making the Fair Isle Star and the Aran Star with different background colours. I found a perfect Fleur-de-lis grey-cream fabric for the sashing, and I used it for the backing too. Originally I wanted to hand quilt this, but I am a very slow hand quilter and it would have taken forever. At the end I decided to machine quilt it with a crisscross diagonal quilting pattern using a green variegated thread and bound the quilt with Kona Chocolate.

Now my beautiful blue-eyed boy Monty has a quilt made specially for him that he lounges on and I can chalk up another finish.

-Soma

Hot Days Of Summer

Behind Blue Eyes