Patch Cat

I saw Elizabeth Hartman's cat patchwork blocks and thought they were adorable but way too complicated for my sewing inclinations, so I played around in CorelDraw (hooray for snap to grid) and came up with this cat block idea

which I decided to try out today (instead of working on the other patchwork project I had ready to go...)

I showed it to the kiddo without telling him it was supposed to be a cat, and he gave it a hug and asked if he could have it, so I took that as a positive ID.  (After I made progress with this springtime palette, he asked of he could have something wilder...so...yeah...eventually...)

The only tweak I think I'll make is to flip one of the eye blocks so the patch arrangement is mirrored instead of identical (although it doesn't really matter.)  And eventually I'll make an entire proper patchwork top arranged something like this

Eventually.

A quick fix

I am not good at applying iron-on decals.  I know this.  The last one I tried to apply re-affirmed this, and the shirt was stuffed into the edge of the cloth stash until I could figure out what to do about the remains of the badly-applied decal.  Today, I made myself figure out what to do about it, and ended up covering it up, like so:

Why, yes, I do remember the late 1980s.

I dunno if the kiddo will ever want to wear this, but at least it's in a state where it can be worn again, and a Thing was cleared out of the cloth stash area, which is  good.

And then I started working on a shirt for me, mixing these prints

Print Mixing: If you sew 'em together, they go together.  I should be able to finish it tonight or tomorrow.  (That doesn't mean I will finish it tonight or tomorrow, of course.)

Experimental Swirl

I mentioned in the last post that I had an idea for a bias swirl skirt, but needed to experiment with the pattern piece before I committed the Chosen Cloth to it.

The first thing that needed experimentation was the pattern itself, because this is the bias swirl skirt pattern I actually already had

 and at no time in recorded history have I had (or do I ever plan to have) 34½" hips, so that needed to be rectified.  Plus, the shape of this skirt-as-sewn is an A-line, and I wanted something significantly fuller.  PLUS plus, I wanted the swirl shapes to be more extreme.

So, after determining that the three skirt swirl pattern pieces as given were actually identical (my guess is that it was repeated three times to help people figure out if they had enough fabric or not...), I traced off one and started working with extending the swoosh.  I also tried widening the piece, so it would create something that actually fit  over my hips, but I eventually realized that the overall enlargening could be accomplished by simply cutting more than the original six panels, which would also add to the fullness and end up with a gathered waist instead of a fitted waistband.

On to the weird prints for the first experiment skirt...

Poking along

Felt rather uninspired the last week (cyclical chemical side effect, whee), decided I should make SOMETHING, but, when I confronted the fabric stash...there were so many somethings I could make that I didn't know where to start.

I decided, therefore, to try to be...random.  I turned my back on the cloth, stuck my hand in the "cotton of 3 yards or less" section, and started rifling back and forth until Chip meowed at me for attention, which put my hand on this

Oh.  Hmm.