"BoHo Cat Happy" quilt top finished

I brought this panel back with me from my visit to the states. It was simply squares of cat blocks.

It is $10 for this fun panel! the cat blocks trim to 7.5” so they finish at 7” in the quilt top.

I also brought back a bin of Loralie fabrics from which to work.

Now, naturally, I wish I had brought even more back than I did, but at the time, I didn’t have specific ideas yet about what I was going to make. So…I just made some guesses about what I might be able to use that Rachael had easily at hand.

The border fabric is available here. (only $6.99/yard at the time of this writing!)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This particular top uses all Loralie fabrics except the solid black - and the sashing of course. Those are all blender fabrics.

If I could do it over, which, of course, I am not, I would have planned the borders of the blocks better. What happened was that I was preoccupied with mixing up the main kitty blocks into a certain order. I then added the colorful extra borders on them and sometimes I got them too close to another one with similar colors. In the end, I was mostly concerned with getting the actually kitty in the right spot as I had laid it out specifically with those.

However, I didn’t want to redo my layout.

If I had had more fabrics from Loralie’s collection, I could have done a better job. I think that’s the short of it.

The blocks finish at 11” - so 11.5” before being put into the top. At least that’s the ideal. I found some of mine ended up width - but I made it work.

I know, excuses, excuses. It’s the way it is because I made it that way. Imperfect. Very much like me. But really - I was focused on so many other things like the position of the blocks and that cool sashing!!! :)

I made it with the sashing strips like they are to help it have a more Bohemian feel to it - with all those colors and segwayed diagonally down the top. I hope the colors come through in the photos.

I used light green, light blue, light yellow and white as sashing. The trickiest part of this for me was figuring out how long to cut the sashing pieces that were going to be sewn on the diagonal to make the two colored sashing (2.5”x7”).

Here’s the layout that I used. I shouldn’t have put so much yellow in my design (surrounding the cats) because I don’t actually have any yellow Loralie fabric. :) So…I just used the plan for the layout of the blocks - but sew the borders on the blocks in the colors shown. That’s just a heads up.

This is now my third Loralie layout I’ve worked up using her panel blocks or fabrics. Here are the other two. Her fabrics are really nice quality and are a pleasure to work with. Naturally the designs are fun as well!

As I continue to do these Loralie quilts - they will probably all be smallish - lap size. I don’t think that most people would actually use them on their queen size bed - though I think it would be fun! :)

And there you - a finished top for us today.

Have a great day wherever you are reading.

Becky Petersen11 Comments