Finally, a new project!

Today and tomorrow I'll be sewing with my quilt club and that means I'll be working on my 4th of July quilt again. I'll have an update on that Monday but for today I'm excited to share what I've been working in all week. I can't hold off any longer. I need to start a new project.

Just like you I have a dozen pattern and ideas for new projects. But my friend, Lora, has been not very subtle about her "need" for a quilt. She volunteers at Richmond Animal League and she is also owned by 2 dogs and 2 cats. So the quilt had to be about dogs and cats. Plus I was interested in doing a quilt with some sort of animal block. I like Elizabeth Hartman patterns and her Penguin parade quilt is also on my list. But Lora loves Pit Bulls so this pattern from Sew Fresh Quilts was perfect. This quilt is 60" and I wasn't really interested in a queen size quilt of only dog heads. So I picked up her cat pattern with the idea of doing cats in the border. 

Look at that blackbird quilt. Isn't that cute too? I'll just add that to the list too. Lora knows that I'm making this for her. I knew as soon as she saw the first block in Instagram that she would know the quilt was for her anyway. 

Since it's not a surprise she got to pick the background color and she picked blue. I didn't have a true plan last week but I had enough of an idea to go ahead and dye fabrics. The background of the dogs will be the light blue, then a 3" border of medium blue and the outside border in the dark blue. The fabrics for the blocks will be my "waste" fabrics that I love so much. The dogs and cats will have a tie dye look. Then it was time to put this in EQ and see how it looked.

So I started with the center and, of course, the dog s look great. But then I got to the border and I didn't get very far before I realized that these cats would not work. Egads, that hideous! The cats look menacing.

I tried dozens of really bad border ideas. Here are just a few. I tried several ways to keep those cats but Lora and I eventually realized that they just didn't belong. The bones were just too juvenile. That zig zag at the top was a border block from EQ and we liked that one.

We both liked this one so I let that marinate in my brain overnight.

In the end I decided that there was too much white in the border so I took off the outside white triangles. After I get this together I might consider adding a 2" dark blue border at  the end but this is what I'm going forward with for now.

The pattern instructions for the dog blocks are very well written so I'm looking forward to jumping into this project next week. Dogs and cats are going to sleep on this quilt so I'm not going to stress for perfection. I just want it to be fun.