And the painted ponies go up and down

Greetings from Nantucket Island! This quilt is made from a panel called "Painted Ponies," and it's a finish for Wrap a Smile.

I wanted to try a panel bordering technique that I saw on a free Benartex pattern called "Cool Cats." The octagon purple border is made of eight half rectangle triangles, and makes a neat frame for the floral horses. Everything inside that purple is part of the panel.

To round out the rest of the quilt, I pieced up four big hearts using Cluck Cluck Sew's free block pattern. So fast and easy. I used some fun novelty prints for the hearts, including balloons, rainbow trees and feathers. So I'm calling this one Horse Feathers.

I didn't manage to get a photo of the feather fabric heart, but here it is in one of the little border squares. You can also see the binding fabric, a multi colored butterfly print with a purple background. I usually cut my bindings 2.5" wide, but tried 2.25" this time for a tighter finish.

The back is pieced from a chunk of dark yellow and a groovy psychedelic star print.

Here's a closeup of the stars. Aren't they fun? And I was able to put one of the Wrap A Smile labels on this quilt myself. Now I'm an official "International Quilter," I guess!

The quilting is an all over stipple for cuddly softness. The lighting in Nantucket Harbor was briefly good enough to show the texture. We were anchored a loooooong way from shore, as you can see by all the tiny boats in the background. Mostly it was drizzly and foggy during our visit this week. I call that "Quiltin' Weather."

The HRT bordering technique was pretty straightforward and should be easy to adapt to other panel sizes, so I'm glad to have this in my tool kit. These ponies are 10" finished, so the HRTs were 5" finished. The only slightly tricky part was wrapping my head around how the panel borders and heart blocks lined up with the cornerstones.

I also wanted to share this lovely box of goodies that I received from a quilty friend. A bright stack of fat quarters, tons of scraps including dogs, owls, and bears, oh my! Plus a fat eighth bundle of sea critters, so cute! And can you see the little styluses next to the bears? Rose makes those herself and they are so clever. One is a black cat and the other is a funny lady with wild hair. For my non-quilting readers, a stylus is used to guide fabric under the needle so your fingers don't have to get too close. Very useful. Thank you so much, Rose!

And finally, it's the annual parade of Pets on Quilts over at Lily Pad Quilting. Angel has been enjoying her hexagon quilt lately, after snubbing it for many months. Who knows why these preferences come and go with cats? I'm just glad that she's been feeling better. You can see where they shaved her tummy for the ultrasound. Her fur is growing back slowly but surely, and her appetite is good. We bought her one of those pet drinking fountains and she really likes it, so I think she's also drinking more water for better kidney health. Be sure to drop by Lily Pad to see lots more cute animals on quilts!

Cat on a quilt

Lily Pad Quilting has an annual link party called "Pets on Quilts" and this is the big week to join in. Seems like many quilters have furry quilt inspectors! Since many of my pieces get donated, I try my best to keep Angel off of them. But as you can see, I'm not always successful.

I realized that I never shared the finish of this quilt, which has actually been done for about four months. Last time I blogged about it, it was an unfinished flimsy with only the blue polka dotted border. It felt a little small, so I added the piano key border in bright pinks to help the triangle points pop out a bit. Many of the fabrics are Kaffe Fassett.

The border is a striped fabric, not pieced, and I quilted between each stripe to make it look pieced. That was actually quite tedious, and next time I think I'll just piece instead! The rest of the quilting is straight lines about 3/4" from the seams. This is a wild and busy quilt, but soft and snuggly. It hasn't named itself, either. Any suggestions?

You can see a little of the back in this arty-farty sky photo. It's a pretty abstract floral in all the same bright colors on a white background. There's also a bit of grey, which matches Angel's fur on the front. 

We're taking Angel to the kennel today as we will be out of town and off the boat for a week. I didn't have the heart to boot her off the quilt last night since she's on her way to cat jail.