Yet another Cat and Garden Update

First, a request from Mom. She liked the picture of Libby from my last post, but demands that Toby get equal time. So here's my other rescued Siamese. He wanted to look out the window undisturbed and chatter at the birds, especially a dove that lives in the ash tree. But I wanted a picture and kept tapping him on his furry little butt, so he'd look at ME instead of the bird. He finally turned around, looked exasperated, and gave me a couple of long meows. So this is him explaining, "The white bird is out there, I'd much rather watch it, if you'd quit thumping my rear end, I could concentrate. Understood?"


So I'll leave the cat alone, and start with the garden headline news ... my first tomato! It's on the Better Boy plant, the one that had blooms when I bought it. This plant has three, but the other two are even smaller-than-green-pea size.


The wading pool squash are going great so far. I'm not going to let myself get too excited, though, because they were going pretty good last year too, till the rabbit got them. Any of you that regularly garden know of a good companion plant that I could grow with the squash? I've heard corn, but... not in a wading pool, of course.


And here's my windowbox snowpeas. I'll have to put them near the cage pretty soon, so they can climb, but the cage is round front by my peony bush. When they start getting the huge golf-ball size buds, the peonies are usually too heavy for the stem and need some support until the blooming is over.


And, I'll close with another group shot. ;) The banana pepper plants aren't growing near as fast as the tomatoes, anyone know why? Any advice?

Seminole Patchwork

Here's my first try at Seminole patchwork!

I've decided to have a Seminole strip in the Block of the Month strip quilt I'm doing with my guild. Since I'm offering it in several sizes, I'm giving them the choice to do a narrow, 2 inch strip, or a slightly wider 4 inch strip:



Because I had to test the sizes first, I'm doing both for my quilt. :) Some of the more complicated Seminole patchwork was really impressive, but I decided to do an easy one. If you'd like a sneak preview of the block of the month instructions that will be given to the guild at the end of April, here's the link:

Block of the Month for May, 2009

And of course, all the instructions for the previous four rows are on the guild's website at www.ucquilts.com

Ready for another Toby birdwatching picture? He thinks when he sits behind the curtain in the front window that he's hidden - unaware that he's totally exposed to the anybody at the front of the house... :) I have a bed of yellow and purple iris that are blooming there, so right now, the stalks are tall and green, lots to watch!

Kitty Pix

The weather in Memphis has been alternately nice and nasty. Today we're under a tornado watch, we had thunderstorms with hail this morning... but just last week we had a couple of lovely, sunny days with temps in the 70's. Both cats enjoyed sitting in the open windows, snifffffing long sniffs thru the screen.

First, here's Libby. This was just prior to a sneeze. I think she must have inhaled some pollen. :D


Below is Toby, and the sun on his window moves off to the left as the afternoon progresses.

*sings* ...but tomorrow may rain, so, I'll follow the sun....


I keep thinking he's going to fall off the window, but he hasn't yet!


Sometimes I think see Libby looking over at him and smirking at the poses he contorts himself into, to get the last dregs of warmth:

Another Tote Done

Here's the second tote done, with a jungle themed print. Coated red canvassy stuff for the bottom and straps and pocket this time, don't know where I got it, but it's been in my fabric drawer forever. I'm doing these completely from stash, not buying a thing.


I quilt the top half of these before I sew the straps and pocket on. For batting, I'm using some flannel that started pilling the first time I washed it. I knew it wouldn't be good for a quilt border like I wanted, but for batting inside the tops of these totes, nobody will see it. Nothing fancy for the quilting either, I just lay down strips of masking tape in nice straight rows, and sew between the tape. You can barely see the lines of stitching if you click on the picture below.

My Siamese inspector is in just about the same position as last time. Predictable, isn't he? I hung both totes on the doorknob when I finished taking the picture above, and Toby was so sure I'd hidden something behind them, he had to check:

Autumn Totebag

In the interest of using less plastic bags, I've decided to use some of my excessive fabric stash and make some totes. Here's my first one, with a Fall theme:


The bottom, straps and pockets are an orangey denim, very stiff. I wanted something about the size of a standard paper grocery sack, but a little wider, with straps that I could hang on my shoulder. I also wanted it sturdy enough to carry cans, bottles of V-8 or fruit juice, etc.

I probably could have gotten this thing done faster if I'd had a pattern to follow, but all the patterns I saw weren't the right size, didn't have the heavyweight fabric on the bottom, or didn't go up the sides as far as I wanted. I'd hoped to have the straps meet at the bottom of the bag, maybe even go into the center bottom seam, but I wanted them long enough to go over my shoulder more than I wanted them to go all the way across the bottom.

My machine didn't like sewing on the thickness of the denim, especially when I made the straps and stitched them down over the sides of the pockets. I finished off the inside too, zig-zagging the edges of the denim so they wouldn't fray, and using bias tape to encase my two side seams.

Toby is the resident Siamese inspector you see in the picture. He has an oversize bump of curiosity and has to follow me from room to room wherever I go. He tells me I should have made it even bigger, to carry the LARGE size bag of MeowMix. :D

Chick in Salad

In November, I'm going to be teaching a class at my guild's retreat ... on making chickens and other fowl. There's already a bunch of samples made that I showed HERE. Then I thought the other day that the birds needed a 'home' to live in. Here's the chick-in Salad, with bacon. The two fabric slices of bread to the right there are going to be part of a chick-in club sandwich. I had some fabric that made great cheese slices, and lettuce, and more bacon, of course. I'll finish that in a couple of days. :) I'm debating on how much of the chicken I want showing between the bread - you think just the beak and eyes, or should I make a chicken with feet to poke out too?


As I was sewing, Libby comes to join me on the couch. She really wanted to nap, but I couldn't resist teasing her with a strip of selvedge. Isn't that a long-suffering, p.o.'ed look she's giving me?


She has to put up with a lot, as a quilter's cat, doesn't she? I think it's payback for all the times she dashes through the block bits I've laid out, scattering them all over the table and floor before I can get them sewn up.

Bathtime

Time for some cat pix?

It was bath time at my house this afternoon. But it always seems that Libby is the bath-giver and Toby the bath-accepter.


He tucks his chin and presents the top of his head to her... but it's almost never reciprocal. Do you think it's an older/younger thing or a female/male thing?


If she stops too early for him, he'll give a couple of desultory swipes of his tongue across her face to get her started again, but he's never held her down and washed her, like she does him.

St. Patrick's Day!

Happy wearing of the green, everyone!





More funny pictures from lolcats

I keep trying to get one picture at least to the voting pages of icanhascheezburger but no success so far. Maybe I need to take more photos? Maybe they have to have a minimum number of votes before they'll even look at them?

Blocks and blockhead

First the blockhead... he KNOWS he's not supposed to be on this shelf, but the new cat tree puts it within climbing distance. Today he knocked off the stuffed siamese on the corner and sat there himself. He reminds me of the Sesame Street song: One of these things is not like the other... one of these things just doesn't belong...


I've been collecting siamese cats for about ten years now. The breakable ones and the ones I don't want to become cat toys are inside the doors, the ones on top were all gifts. :)

And I've just finished step four of Bonnie's Quiltville mystery, 40 triangular green/white units:

More Quiltville Mystery blocks

Here's my finished step 2 of the mystery, 100 nine patch blocks with three light corners, four dark sides, and one corner the accent color. I also cut the spacer blocks you see off to the right side, a stack of white and green 3½ inch squares.


And here's my nosy 'helper' trying to see why I spread out all these nice soft stacks of ten blocks... is it a kitty napping-place perhaps? Did I bury any mousies under there?


Decided that I didn't want only white-on-white for the white squares, but scrappier whites, so I went digging in my FQ piles and drawers. I found some fabrics that hadn't made my 'Christmas' collection, but could go nicely in a holiday themed quilt. Then I went out and bought the red and green on white snowflakes, found some precut strips that I picked all the white or cream bits out of, so now I have some snowflakes, some white on white, some snow covered trees with teeny redbirds, white with small gold metallic stars, and last, added in the two Christmas themed FQ's on white I wasn't going to use because I only had two.

Ready for the next step! Wonder what this quilt's going to look like?

Siamese Quilt

I've been asked if I have ever made a siamese quilt - yup, I've made two, both wall hanging size. Here's the first:



I made this one for a guild challenge, Black and White and .... (we had to finish the sentence.)

Some people made black and white only quilts, others added one color, and some did a free interpretation, adding all colors. Mine is titled ... and We're All Over. The Siamese cats are based on Solange, from Brooke McEldowney's comic strip '9 Chickweed Lane', and used by permission.

If you like cats, you'll enjoy looking through his Hallmarks of Felinity website, collection of his cat comics.

This one was quilted for me by fellow blogger and quilter Ann H., in Missouri.

Uses of a Pizza Box

Like many of you, I like using pizza boxes (clean, unused) for sorting/storing my projects in progress. Here's the palette for my next quilt, teals, lavenders, purples, fuschias, blues, a few lighter turquoises, and two slightly larger prints tying together several of the colors:


I wish I could find more of the two prints on the upper right and left, either one of them would work nicely as a border. All 200 of these squares are from my stash, I haven't bought any fabric since before Christmas. Most of these are from 4 inch squares and FQ's I got VERY cheaply on eBay some time ago. It's so nice to already have your squares cut for you!

And, like the half square triangles in my other ongoing project, there's a furry good reason I have to keep them all sorted out in a pizza box with a lid:


Now there's no shortage of places Toby can lay. He has a cat tree with 3 perches. There's a windowsill with a view. The couch behind him is empty, with a nice cushion... and just over his back, you can see the raggy quilt that I leave on the couch for them. Not much damage they could do to that old denim thing, even with both of them still having their claws. It's very soft, very sturdy, easy to wash. But nooooo, where does he want to lounge? He shoves over the book I'm reading and sprawls half on, half off the pizza box. I could understand it more if it smelled like pizza, but this was an unused box I begged from Pizza Hut.

He kept squirming around, pushing with his feet, till the book landed on the floor and he could get truly comfy. But at least he's not IN the box, shedding on my squares! :D