Originally Posted by KyKat

HA! Beautiful quilt. My mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother (yes, I'm fortunate to have her been the one to teach me to quilt and I still have the first thimble she gave me when I was 7 years old), when a quilt was finished, they used the expression "it's time to toss the cat". My mother explained that when they used to set up the quilting horses in the kitchen and all the women would come and make a quilt in a day, when they would finish, they would "toss the cat" onto the quilt and let it run around on the quilt so that the static electricity in the cat's fur would pick up all the little bits of thread. I don't know if it worked, but when someone said "it's time to toss the cat", it was a signal that the quilt was finished.