Cat Quilt

I have this inability to throw a scrap of fabric away if it is bigger than a dollar bill. Next to my fabric in the sewing room is an overflowing box stuffed with folded scraps. The mountain rises and falls, depending on my inspiration level. Last summer I patched together an entire sheet of fabric and made a dress for Calliope.


I've been experimenting with quilting a bit, and know that I love the look of hand-made quilts rather than machine. But there were all these scraps, you see, and I thought why not do a little experiment and see what a totally machine made quilt would look and feel like? I had a specific pile of fabric left over from another project and each piece was cut in more or less the same triangle shape. I just sewed them together in pairs, then ironed out seams and joined into bigger pairs, then strips, then put the strips together. I ended up with something bigger than a pillow cover but smaller than a crib quilt. A cat-quilt, if I may term it thusly.

I put in one layer of very thin lightweight wool batting, backed it with muslin, and put my walking foot on the sewing machine. The triangles suggested a zig zag pattern and I went with that for the quilting in plain white thread. Then I put on the binding (muslin again) and finished that up by hand. Even on a machine quilted piece the binding has to go on by hand or else it gets squeezed along the seam and looks bad in my opinion.


Final verdict: Ok for cats. Or in my case, my bedside table where the little quilt now resides and provides a pleasant backdrop to my lamp, alarm clock, DS, and a book. It came out very very thin and I think that may be the loft of the batting. Just way too low. There is no fluff to it. But I think that also comes from the very tight machine stitching. There is no break between stitches as there is in hand-sewn, no in-and-out gap.

I think I'll try it again sometime with a fluffier loft and perhaps looser tension on the machine.