Rainbow Scrap Cats Again

This week I finished the pink litter of kittens with their Mama Cat. It was the final litter for the final kitten quilt. I am making three kitten quilts, and each has six litters.

A litter consists of 1 mama cat and 12 kittens. That means there were 18 litters total in the three quilts; 18 mama cat (12” blocks) and 216 kitten blocks (6”).  All were pieced this year as part of my personal use of scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

This is the only kitten quilt with yellow, and I think it adds a real bright, happy punch to the mix. I am thrilled to have the flimsy done. There are a couple yards left of the blue cat fabric that I backed the other 2 quilts with. This quilt will use that and some pink polka-dot fabric for the back.  It will be basted and quilted in a couple weeks.

And then yesterday I started piecing the final Christmas quilt. This will be for my son Ryan. All the rest of my Christmas quilts are either done or to the flimsy stage; some are basted and ready to quilt, some are not. But this one was just a couple jelly rolls until yesterday afternoon.  Anyway, these are the light and medium light strips in the set. The rest of the mediums and the darks are yet to come, and I plan for them to be more to the outside of the quilt. We’ll see how that goes. I’m calling it November Rain, because the colors remind me of November, and Ryan used to love (and still does) the music of Axl Rose (Guns ’n Roses) and their song November Rain. So there you have it.

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I have pieced 16 blocks of the 48 needed.  I put 4 black 1.5” strips and 5 colored 2.5” strips side by side and sewed them into a lengthwise strip set. From that I am able to cut out 3 14.25” squares. Two of those squares are placed right sides together, one with stripes running up and down, the other with stripes running across. Then they are sewn together on all 4 sides with a 1/4” seam. Finally, they are cut diagonally (X) and it yields four individual blocks. I am using the 1.5” black stripes at the ends (and a couple in the middle), and that really sets off the contrasting colors and directions. I am going to have a lot of fun playing with these blocks to come up with a final placement. Expect a post on that later in the week.

And if you missed my last post (because it was mid-week and not a Saturday), I finished my orange peel quilt for my DDIL. You can see it here.

I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday over at Angela’s So Scrappy blog. If you mosey on over there, you will see lots of colorful eye candy as we all sew our little fingers to the bone trying to finish in time for Christmas.