Corona Cats Quilt
Corona Cats, approximately 63 x 84
One of my brothers and his wife, JJ, love cats. Her ambition in life is to be a crazy cat lady. At the moment they "only" have 3 cats but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that the acquired 3 more! Last year when I made sample quilts for Paula Nadelstern, one of them was a symmetry cat quilt. I knew that JJ would love it and that's what inspired a larger version of the quilt.
The name Corona Cats from the space-themed backing fabric and also as a nod to this being made during the corona-virus pandemic. But mostly it's about the backing fabric.
What I love doing with symmetry fabrics is to pick a simple block and make it over and over just changing the fabrics. I think you can see in this photo that the face part of the cat block is made of only 8 pieces: 4 fabrics in mirror image. I love the surprises that happen when the pieces are all together. Sometimes I cut pieces thinking that one part of the fabric might be the eyes and then some other part becomes the eyes. It's a fun surprise. Each of the blocks is 8" x 10" and at that size some of them can be kind of creepy!
It's also very messy! I have to have all of the fabrics out and visible. When I work on one of these quilts it's the only thing that I work on. Some of these cat blocks took 20 minutes to cut and others took an hour to find the right fabrics. That's part of what I love about making these.
All of the fabrics in this quilt are from various Paula Nadelstern lines, including the Marbella background fabric.
It's also very messy! I have to have all of the fabrics out and visible. When I work on one of these quilts it's the only thing that I work on. Some of these cat blocks took 20 minutes to cut and others took an hour to find the right fabrics. That's part of what I love about making these.
All of the fabrics in this quilt are from various Paula Nadelstern lines, including the Marbella background fabric.
You can click on this photo to see some of the cats closer and see the different fabrics in each cat.
The most technically difficult part of this quilt was this border. It's actually made with one fabric. I cut identical strips from it and Ihad to piece it as a frame first and then add it to the quilt. I pieced the mitered corners first and then seamed each side in the middle to get 4 perfectly symmetrical joins. It was worth the extra work but I will not be in a hurry to do it again.
The backing of this quilt is amazing. I was shopping online for backing for 2 other quilts and I found this digitally printed fabric. I bought it and then later asked permission from my SIL to use it on the back of her quilt. It makes for a really cool reversible quilt.
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I knew from making previous symmetry quilts that the quilting would never show so I concentrated on what would look best on the back. This overall texture pattern was easy and has a bit of a space loot to it. I used So Fine in the needle and Invisifil in the bobbin.
