Kitty Tale Quilt finished!

Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts after this morning's earthquake.  We were awakened early and stayed near the TV but that was about it.  For over an hour northern Japan was on a tsunami alert but that didn't amount to anything either.  For the past three days we have been on typhoon alert too and schools (and my crosswalk duty) were cancelled.  Other parts of Japan were hit hard by the typhoon but it seems to have gone around us.  We barely had wind (and the kids in the city had a free school day with fine weather!) Anyway, Japan has been on pins and needles the past few days.

Back to patchwork.

We had an unveiling yesterday at our patchwork gathering.  Mrs. O had SENT the quilt back to us after she machine quilted it because she was afraid that this week's forecast typhoon would keep her from coming herself but she did make it and we opened her package with all of us present.

Ta-da!  Presenting the Kitty Tales quilt which will be raffled off at the kindergarten bazaar today.

Mrs. O did a wonderful job of machine quilting in all those pinwheels and along the border.  She put double hearts in all the pinwheel blocks...

And a string of double hearts in the border.  Mrs. O said she draws the pattern onto paper first and then stitches over the paper to make the design uniform all over the quilt.  The hardest part is taking off the paper after the quilting is finished!  Do you see how she's put in the binding?  She sews binding on from the back, folds it over and then applique stitches by machine along the edge at the front.  A faster way to do it than by hand!

This was a wonderful quilt to do as a group as there were so many time consuming blocks to applique and embroider.  I think it was supposed to be a Block of the Month quilt and if I were to have made it myself I never would have gotten anything else sewn during the year.  As it went, we handed out the embroidery blocks, pooled those when they were made and then spent a couple of patchwork times making the pinwheels and yo-yos together.

I'm not going to make it to the bazaar today but I left instructions (and money) for someone to buy me 10 raffle tickets.  I'm sure my own kitties would love to gaze at a Kitty Tale quilt on the wall!