Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, Where Have You Been?

Cat Houses

63 x 80

Hand quilted around windows and between buildings

Machine quilted loops and stars on my DSM. 

When I saw the August Block Lotto Little Windows block I immediately thought of putting cats in the windows.  

This quilt is for my youngest son, aged 30, who has loved cats since he was a little boy. We live in the country and people often abandon their cats and they show up at our barn that serves as a cat bed and breakfast.   All of the cats used to follow him around like he was head cat. They waited with him each morning for the school bus and somehow knew when he would be home because they would line up in the gravel drive way shortly before the school bus arrived.   He would spend hours on end out in the barn playing with the cats in the summer and my husband and I used to joke that he was spending way too much time in the cat house.  So this Cat House quilt is for him. 

There are cat pole dancers. 

A Cat House called Cattywampus. 

A Cat House called Catty Corner.

A Cat House full of pink cats called The Pink Pussy. 

And a Cat House called The Cat's Meow. 

For the night sky I used glow-in-the-dark thread. 

A few notes on glow thread...I've used it before for machine quilting but forgot I never wanted to do it again.  The Superior NiteLite brand glows better and comes in many colors but I didn't have any white on hand so I used...

...the Coats brand. 

Both brand fray and knot and so are very frustrating to machine quilt any large area. 

There are some free-pieced words of advice on the back along with some cat scraps and some black and white gingham I found at the thrift store. 

This was my December finish for a Lovely Year of Finishes.  (#52 at the Goal Setting Party).