The Long Necked Cats and the Long Legged Bird

The Long Necked Cats and the Long Legged Bird
40" x 40"

I am happy to share with you that this piece will be traveling in SAQA's Wild Fabrication's exhibit!  It is an honor to have my work chosen!!

These cats are a whimsical take on my cats and their many personalities; the instigator, the gastronome, the skeptic and the innocent...(top to bottom). They live indoors and spend many hours watching birds through the windows. I imagine them preferring that birds can't fly, but rather run with long legs, putting their bodies right at mouth height! 

I had a lot of fun making this one.  It practically flew together!  I used a whole next set of fat quarters that I bought in La Grange while visiting the Texas Quilt Museum; lots of polka dots from Kaffe Fassett and some batiks from Marcia Derse.  These seemed to blend together in a way I wouldn't have thought possible, but I love it!  Each fabric was Mistyfused, and then traced, and then ironed into place.  I made a make-shift light table by putting a bulb on a cord inside a plastic box.  I added a piece of glass to the top.  Then I made sure to leave the light on for only a few minutes at a time.  The possibility of a meltdown seemed imminent!  So I worked quickly and then turned off the light.  There is most likely a safer way to do this, but since this one worked, I didn't look for another.  Meanwhile, I discovered that my giant box of Prismacolor pencils worked perfectly for drawing on the fabric.  I was able to pick different colors to make sure that my lines showed on the different colored fabrics.  And I drew the lines slightly larger so that I could cut inside the lines and not have the pencil marks on the fabric.  Worked like a charm!  Here is a kitty face just starting.  You can see the fabric on top of the Fat Goddess Teflon sheet, which is on top of my drawing.  It shows even better with the light turned on.

After I fused the cat bodies, I fused to the white background, and then added the dots in the background.  The big ones were cut from some batik circles I had laying around...

LOVE those dots!  All the colors are so pretty!  The little dots were painted.

And after completing all the machine quilting with Masterpiece threads, I went back and added the black line satin stitching and a little hand embroidery on the faces. 

I'm guessing you can probably see where my inspiration for this quilt came from now?