Mini-quilt

Last month my friend and patchwork student, Mrs. N announced that she needed to make four quilts for her friends as her husband was retiring and she would be moving back from the prefecture where he works.  She said she has a year and a half to make four quilts and she had in mind a quilt that she had made before.

Now the quilt she is speaking of is gorgeous and she did a fantastic job of it!  Mrs. N made her quilt in 2017.  HOWEVER... Making four of the same quilt would tire me out entirely even being as dedicated to quilting as I am.  And this quilt is completely hand done...  Hand basted, hand appliqued, hand quilted. It took her at least three months to finish it completely.  AND as I only see Mrs. N once a month (she spending most of her time in another prefecture) I thought the undertaking was going to be horrendous.  And while Mrs. N's friends will be VERY appreciative of a quilt from her, actually ANY handmade piece by Mrs. N would be appreciated and the friends probably wouldn't recognize the amount of work that went into the particular quilt Mrs. N had in mind...  Dissuade her?  Encourage her from afar?  Offer to do half the work for her (the quilting perhaps).

While thinking about how much I should sway Mrs. N, I thought maybe smaller, more reasonably sized hand-made gifts might work and suddenly the day before Mrs N came to my house for patchwork I spent a lot of time up in my sewing room slapping something together.  This is what I came up with.

A cat silhouette.  Mrs. N is a major cat lover and she wanted to be sure to include a cat in her gifts (she includes cats in ALL her quilts).  I found the silhouette on the Internet and just made a rough draft myself... The background was something left-over and though it is a bit busy it brought to mind falling leaves... (I also liked the way some of the background shimmers depending on the light.)

In my drawer I had some cute wooden leaf cutouts and at the size I'd started I just traced around the cutouts on heat-and-bond and bonded them to fabric.  From there it was just ironing everything down, sewing up the borders from my leaders/enders bin and machine quilting some details. 

In any blank spaces on the background I free motion quilted a couple more leaves in invisible thread.

I didn't get the binding on until the next day so I can't really say this little quilt was made in a day but it didn't take much time.

I showed my little quilt to Mrs. N and she immediately declared that THIS was going to be the quilt she made for her four friends.  I hedged and said why didn't she make a start on the bigger quilt and if she got one done and wanted to make another and another and another then great but she said no.  Mrs. N prides herself on being able to make quick decisions and immediately we went through my stash and she picked out fabric, traced the silhouette and made a start on four little quilts.

She also decided that she didn't need to make four quilts ALL of falling leaves but maybe she could figure out other "falling" objects for her cats.  She has made a start on one cat with falling cherry blossoms...

Next month Mrs. N will get to work making borders from my leaders/enders bin.  I DEFINITELY have enough 2 inch squares for all four of her little quilt borders!   And Mrs. N can go on making MORE quilts for herself... she already has a Christmas quilt in mind that she wants to get started on!