Evolution of a tail

I've been working on the cat quilt again this weekend, but it's not very interesting to show you the same thing time and time again, so I went for a different approach this time, and decided to show you the way the tails are made.  I've started with a piece of "magic paper" - aka tea bag paper - which is a nice, soft sort of tissue  (only stronger) which is great for paper piecing (you can leave it in) with the tail shape (including seam allowance) drawn on it.

Let the paper piecing begin...

...and carry on...

Here's a tail with all the piecing completed - as you can see, there's rather a large piece of red hanging off the edge of the piece. When I'm piecing like this, with lots of scraps, I don't bother to try to cut them down to close to the size needed - I just let them hang over and trim when it comes to the next round. Then I can put the largest trimmings back in the pile for more piecing!

Here's a tail which has been trimmed, but not folded under and pressed with seam allowance. 

And here's a finished tail, though it's not attached to the quilt top, just laid out on my rather dirty ironing board cover.  I now have 8 tails fully completed (though only 4 appliqued to the top) and another 3 or 4 partly pieced. I need 20...  And I have 5 border rectangles done, with another 5 in progress. Only 18 to go!