hammock tally and back to the horse quilt

Yesterday, on the way to a family Christmas celebration, I dropped off the last of the cat hammocks and cage curtains.  I'm still working on the cage mats, but I'll share about those another day.

Today, I'm sure you'd like to know some totals of what all I did with all that fabric!

Total hammocks: 113

Total yards: 72 + 18 ironing board covers

The yardage was estimated (you know how you hold it in one hand and stretch your arm out and measure from your nose to your fingertips?  yeah, that kind of estimate) and could be off by a fair amount, but we can say it was 72 nose-to-fingertips at least!

I thought I was done for a while.

Wrong.

She gave me two more paper grocery sacks of fabric.

I told her not to expect these as quickly, but it IS fun to work with someone else's fabrics.  This batch, though, is not so many larger pieces, but a fair number of oddballs with chunks cut out.  I'll do what I can, but expect this to not go as far.

The funnest part was what else was in the bag!  Two shoebox-size plastic boxes with all sorts of sewing notions.  LOTS of needles (hand-sewing, hand-quilting, and a few machine), scissors, threads, tailor's chalk and accessories and all sorts of fun stuff.  Older, for sure.  I expect a grandma somewhere passed away and this was her sewing box.

The coolest thing in there?

These three needle books - with needles still in them!  (Not all the needles, but enough.)  I don't know much about these types of things, but wonder if they're worth anything?  Anybody out there in blogland know anything?

Oh, and remember how I said the second camo might be military?  When I got up close and personal, I found this:

Yep.  Military.  Marines to be exact.  Fun!

But today, with the stash of hammocks gone and a pause in sewing those, I wanted to tackle what I hope is the hardest job with the graduation quilt for my niece.  Remember the horse debacle replaced by a different horse quilt?  And I bought fabrics...

...and supplemented with some I have at home, too.  But I needed to decide what to use and what to skip.  Today, with a much bigger floor in my sewing room (thanks in part to hammocks being turned in, but also to Christmas gift giving - storage of gifts is in my sewing room because it is upstairs and easy to close the door if people show up unannounced!), I sat down with the fabrics and my notes and figured this out:

The fabrics in the center will be the horse.  Except the very top white one - that will be stars.

As I was laying out the fabrics, it occurred to me that those hearts might be in a key spot to look like, um, well, horse farts!  So I had to go look at my photo and figure it out.

I've circled in blue where this print will end up.  Not quite as bad as it could have been, so I'm leaving it.  And even if it looks that way, I think she'll get a kick out of it.  (Not quite a unicorn that farts rainbows, as the saying goes, but it IS a horse in this one!)

Okay, back to adult-land, I made a key for what everything is because there are 16 backgrounds and almost as many fabrics in the horse itself.

I'm not entirely convinced this will keep errors away, but it is definitely a good start.  (There are a number of blanks there in the center because there are a few colorway options in the pattern, not because I'm still missing a dozen or more fabrics!)  This is the most planning I've ever done for a quilt before sewing anything.  Whew!  Glad it's done!

Paper piecing is my least favorite...well, after English paper piecing...so I'm not super excited to start this, but it needs to happen.  I think I'm going to do some research on different techniques before I start.  I know there are ways to do it without actually using the papers and a few different techniques that do destroy the papers, and I want to make sure my fighting method is the best one for me.

This week I also gave away many catnip fishies.  They were a big hit.

Three friends tagged me on Facebook with these photos of their kitties, and a coworker asked for more for his mom and sister.  Well, for their cats.  How can I say no to that?!

Worth every minute I spent making them for sure!  And now they're all gone.  Except for the last batch for my niece-kitty.  She'll get hers on Christmas.

Finn has been very present and helpful lately.

I laid out 13 ironing board innards to relax and he decided that was the bestest place for a nap.  He wouldn't even come down for breakfast!

And yesterday, he got a new box.

My sister-in-law got me new cookie sheets (my old ones are getting rusty and one has a crease-dent and for someone who bakes as much as I do, that seems just ridiculous), Finn got the shipping box.  He is pretty sure he is the big winner here, despite the concerned look on his face.

Happy quilting!

Katie