quilting

A Cat’s Tale

August 12, 2022

I have a cat’s tale to share with you today, a DrEAMi project that was a fun diversion for a day. Of course, you can see by the above photo that I had help. More on that in a bit. 

If you’re not familiar with DrEAMi, it’s a fun acronym and linky party created by Sandra of MMMQuilts. DrEAMi stands for Drop Everything and Make It. You know those projects that come along, when you just have to push everything else aside and work on that one? That’s a DrEAMi project, also known as a “squirrel”. Sandra hosts a linky party at the end of each month – you can read more about that here. Feel free to join in the fun – we love to see what the squirrels are up to in your quilt room! 

This little DrEAMi project happened because I decided to drive over to a local quilt shop this week. It is the season of the Minnesota Shop Hop, a statewide annual shop hop with several quilts shops participating across the state. I was in the mood to go for a drive, and the shop hop seemed like a good excuse, so off I went. While at one of the shops, I came across a book in their clearance section that had several fall/Halloween designs. I’m not much into Halloween decor, but there was this cute cat table runner. I bought the book, came home, and got to work. 

The first step, after gathering the fabric, was tracing the appliqué onto fusible. I soon had more help than I needed . . .

Wilbs helping me with all those applique tracings - piecefulthoughts.com

You can imagine that all that crackly paper was far too tempting to leave alone. While I was cutting out one piece, Wilbs was playing with the others. He had to look under, then crunch it a bit. Finally he thought he’d just sit on it and keep it in place for me. 

So much help - piecefulthoughts.com

So much help! I suppose he had every right to be excited about the project, since it involved cats. 

Cat table runner by Disa Designs - piecefulthoughts.com

This cute little runner, measuring 11.5″ x 40″ was designed by Disa Designs. I cannot find a website for the company any longer, but it appears that some of her patterns are still available through a few stores online. 

While this runner was easy to make, there were so many errors in the instructions. The cutting instructions for the background fabric was off by an inch in the width. Thankfully I had enough of the fabric to cut a second, and I still had enough for the backing and binding. Phew. The rest of the errors were minor, but would be confusing to a beginner quilter. 

All that being said, I still enjoyed making this runner. Once I had the appliqué fused, I stitched around them with a zig-zag stitch, nothing fancy. I cheated and marked in the teeth with a Pigma marking pen (I didn’t feel like hand stitching the teeth.) For the quilting, I just did a random angled meander with my walking foot. The thread I used matched so well I had trouble seeing where I had sewn and where I hadn’t! Here’s a closer photo: 

Detail of the random angled meander quilting - piecefulthoughts.com

I was attempting to make it look like cat scratches. While I’m not sure I accomplished that, since I’m keeping this, it works for me. Here’s a close up of the cat. 

Close up of the cat on this runner, pattern by Disa Designs - piecefulthoughts.com

That’s my cat’s tale of how I enjoyed a DrEAMi project and have one more quilt ready for fall! 

I’m linking up today with: 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Wendy

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