Iceblossom

It's a good thing I don't mind quilts wearing out, my goofy dogs and cats don't help their longevity. Many years ago (again, back around Y2K) I participated in a cat block swap, it was my first block swap. My Mother in Law had a side business as a licensed home/pet care taker and just loved it and raved over it. So... between visits (she lives in Michigan, her son moved out here to Seattle to be with me) I made her own version.

We were getting ready for her visit and I was trying to grab some shots of the quilt before it was given away and so of course the dogs had to help. My hubby was in the doorway which is why their attention is turned away from me. Mother in law was floored when she realized the quilt was for her and we already had a box ready to mail it to her so she didn't have to worry about it in luggage. She still remarks all the time about it, quite gratifying!

In my quilt the swap was "off white" which some people took pretty dark. I decided to make my life more complicated by not only a pieced border but then couched cording over it.

In the MiL version, I was slightly more sensible and used the same fabric for the backgrounds and a quilting design in the borders. To connect the projects even further, the "beds" of the quilt were both done with the same paw print meander (and I used both the meander and the border in the recent Here Kitty Kitty quilt).

Edit: I still have an entire box of cat fabrics. Sort of went overboard in collecting there. Just recently (as in last week) the Goodwill near me had a piece of the 3rd over/2nd row halloween cats but with the orange background. I am quite proud of myself that I didn't buy it.

But I must make a thrift store buy confession, today I bought an entire bag/roughly one box size of someone who went through a fabric dying binge. I can recognize it because I went through one of those my own. But a huge amount of lovely hand dyes for $7.99. It is definitely stash and will be a year or two before I even think in that direction (I hope!).