Quilting with a cat

Quilting has been a hobby of mine since my mom helped me make my first quilt for a Young Women's project. It is a ridiculously cute quilt made of old jean that is a checkerboard of pockets and stars. I took it to BYU and used it as my comforter, in fact still use it as a comforter.

My second quilt I cut and pieced entirely on my own, with no help from my talented mom, who thought I was crazy. She did give me advice while choosing the colors. I'm sure my mom thought I was nuts. One spring break we borrowed several quilting book from our friend Bonnie Kelly, and I picked an "unfolding star quilt." It was quite a lot of fun. I think we worked out that with everyone/;' who came to help do the hand quilting it took a total of 150 hours to complete. As a my first solo quilt I think it came out rather well.

Here is also a detail of the quilting we did.

Now, as to the reason I still use a college blanket for my bed instead of a sweet traditional hand quilted quilt--Mr. Tony Fluffypants.

I imagine having a cat is a little bit like having a small child and trying to do something that is clearly very interesting. Except that children don't usually have very pointy claws or love to eat string.

My current quilting project is very small compared to my three queen size quilts. It is a measly 2 feet by 4 feet. It does however have 1058 blocks, compared to the 820 blocks of the unfolding star, and the 117 of the jean quilt. I plan on making the quilting very artistic and last night I finished piecing the top:

I never understood the meaning of annoying until I was arranging the blocks and Tony would treat them as a waterless slip-n-slide, careening through them and then carrying half away on his fur. It took listening to all six hours of the BBC Pride and Prejudice just to find an arrangement that I didn't hate. The quilting will most likely be an exercise in patience.