Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Gaudy Kitty Quilt

KittyonKittyQuilt
  
Oh, gaudy kitty quilt.  I love you so so much.  I am 99.9% sure that this is my favorite quilt that I've ever made, beating this quilt by only 1/10 of a percentage.

DSC_3174

Background - We moved Phoebe into a twin size at the beginning of summer;  hence, she needed a new big girl quilt for her big girl bed.

DSC_3190
 

If you learned anything about Phoebe from her Rainbow Kitty Party, you know that this girl has a *bit* of an obsession with kitty cats.  So I decided to take all of my kitty fabric - including the super gaudy novelty prints that had been in my stash for forever - and combine them all in a quilt that any 4 year old, cat-lovin girl would go nuts over.  In turn, the Gaudy Kitty Quilt was born.

DSC_3194
 

It took me quite awhile to figure out what kind of layout would be best for this crazy quilt.  I didn't want to cut the fabric pieces too small since a lot of these novelty prints have a larger scale.  Plus, I got into quilting because of all the amazing textile design, and I like to really showcase the prints in my quilts.

DSC_3240   


My good friend Rossie is the one who recommended this layout of equilateral triangles with the prints laid out in rows.  I had just finished working on this poor quilt that was never blogged about, which was also made up entirely of triangles, and the last thing that I wanted to look at was MORE TRIANGLES, but I knew that it would be the way to go.

FabricPull

This was my original fabric pull.  I have some other great cat prints in the stash, but once I started putting the majority of the fabrics together, the quilt's own color palette started developing, so I decided to remove the blues and most of the other darker toned prints.  Yes it was being made with novelty cat fabric - but I wanted to at least try and make the final product pretty!

ProgressShots

I didn't have enough kitty fabric to complete the entire top, so I started mixing in other things Phoebe likes - butterflies, bugs, birds, bunnies (apparently anything that starts with B), and some blender floral prints that I thought made the color scheme a bit more interesting.  I'm proud of myself for even cutting into some of my preciously hoarded japanese fairytale prints.

IMG_9541

After getting the top pieced, I made the decision to send out the quilt top to a professional long-armer to be quilted.  I've always quilted my own quilts on my machine at home - even some much larger than this, but my friend Brenda put the idea into my head to have a design of cats quilted all over the top - which was pretty much the best idea I'd ever heard in my life.

Luckily I know Kathy though our Modern Quilt Guild who owns Thread Bear Quilting.  Not only is she an amazing quilter, but she was able to quilt this design all over the gaudy kitty quilt.

I wish I would have remembered to get a detail picture of the quilting itself, but take my word that it's amazing.  If you look closely in the third picture in this post, you can make out the quilting the clearest. 



IMG_8948

And that brings us to the end of this quilty journey.  Phoebe loves, and I mean LOVES her quilt, which makes this momma so darn happy.  But even if she didn't, that would still be okay - because then I'd get to keep it for myself!


Meow! 

**This quilt is part of the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  Click here to be inspired by hundreds of beautiful quilts!

11 comments:

  1. Hey Em, this is one amazing quilt!! I love the gaudy kitty quilt almost as much as you do I think!! Great job and so nice to see your little so happy too, SCORE!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very nice! And you pack your quilts with so much meaning I'm sure they will be treasured for a very long time.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Such a wonderful happy quilt for some wonderful happy girls! Oh, and #bossyrossiestrikesagain

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love this quilt-and kudos to you for making a quilt your little girl adores-heck ANY little girl would adore!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. oh my gosh, this makes me so happy. i love that you took "gaudy" fabric and made something so insanely pretty. and look how happy she is!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I love how this turned out! It's awesome! My 5 year old would LOVE it!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sooooo awesome. I love that you took those crazy cat prints most people would pass up and made them totally work - and yes, I think my cat-obsessed daughter would flip for this one too! Great job!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Such a pretty quilt... and that's even before you realise it's covered in those sweet kits! An impressive collection of kit fabric!

    ReplyDelete
  9. That's such an awesome quilt! I love that you called it the gaudy kitty quilt -- that just adds to its epicness! :D

    ReplyDelete
  10. Love this quilt. Want to make one JUST like it!

    ReplyDelete
  11. This quilt is just awesome and I enjoyed the story behind it. Btw I checked out the triangle quilt that was never blogged about and it is very nice too, but the kitty cats are my favorite!

    ReplyDelete