More cats, and cords, inchies, cards and so on

So, lots of stuff happening here today - the kids slubbed around in the morning in their pyjamas and watched telly for ages, which was great, as that meant sewing time for mummy. It pays to take them out for the day and wear them out completely, I guess...

Anyway, I started by putting together the two half cats, to make two whole cats (well, nearly whole - no tails until later, and no faces just yet). I think I will wait until I have at least 8 of them done before I try to put them together any further than just the cat block. Many of you have commented on them, so I took a photo of the whole pattern today, so you can see how the tails go - you can probably tell if you enlarge the picture, the tails are also sawtooth. (And dang it - just spotted a mistake in these cats - I put the background fabric between the legs instead of the body fabric - d'oh! the blue cat should have taupe and the brown cat, gold. Will fic that later!)

After finishing up the cats, I went to do the edging on my winter postcards (photo below) but there was some contention among girls about who was going to use the computer, so I separated them and took one upstairs with me to make some inchies - the ones on the left are Olivia's (aren't they great? I only did the rotary cutting and the edging and helped with the glue, but all the design work is hers alone); the ones on the right are mine - they show up a little better in person, but the black background isn't quite as successful as some of the other colours, I think, although I did have a reason for wanting to do a dark background which is...





I used a slightly larger piece (1.25") to make a background for one of my new faces, which I made into a necklace, using a cord made with my new Diva cord maker. I think the cord is a little wonky in places, as both the girls took turns using it, but frankly, it still looks fine, and I'm very happy with the necklace - the little face
is on a background of Angelina-covered black fabric on this not-quite-inchie.




And finally, here's a postcard I received today - this is from the June challenge on Arts in the Mail (fabric painting) - and is a beautiful Dogwood from Jan in Canada. Really lovely. Makes me wish I could draw... And here's a close up of the finished winter postcard, a little over-exposed, but you get the basic idea. My machine kept skipping stitches in the satin stitch - cleaning out rather a lot of fluff from the bobbin carriage seemed to clear that up, but I confess to leaving some gaps in the stitching anyway!