Having recently shared my 2023 Word of the Year, MEANDER, I can now take you on the first couple of curves of my creative meanderings.

So back in the New Year (how come that’s still less than two weeks ago?) I had cooked up a plan to pull out two languishing UFO projects and put them under the Free Motion Quilting needle…. But instead I somehow got side tracked into making a spooky cat wall hanging! A whaty, what? I don’t ‘do’ Halloween and I have no affinity with felines. However I do spend quite a few of my working hours standing at the shop cutting table which just happens to be alongside shelf loads of cat related and spooky print fabrics. So maybe it was more sublimation than inspiration but whatev’s I hatched a plan and bought the fabrics!

I’ve always been fascinated by tessellating patterns so was instantly attracted to Arleen Hillier’s free pattern, ‘Cats on Cats Quilt‘. I decided rather than make a full size quilt I’d adapt the pattern to make a wall hanging. My version of the pattern became three stacked cats with one switched to face in the opposite direction. The unfinished piece, with borders, measures 19″ x 43″.

Wall hanging pin-basted and ready for quilting.

Originally I thought I’d use the orange fabric for the middle cat but then realised the wall hanging could end up looking a bit like a traffic light 🚦 showing an Amber-Green sequence! So I switched round the orange and black cats. Probably best to have done this anyway as the outline of the black cat may have got lost against the purple background print. I enjoyed fiddling about keeping the orange cat print orientated correctly in the border Flying Geese – simple pleasures 😀

So that’s the Squirrel project, now back to the UFOs. Each of these projects was basted and partially quilted way back at the beginning of 2022. Then fear of FMQ/dissatisfaction with the stitching already completed plus the distraction of projects with deadlines pushed these two to the back of the UFO Cupboard of Shame 🤫

DONE IS BETTER THAN PERFECT hasn’t always been my mantra. However I set up my sewing machine for FMQ ready to enjoy the process and not get hung up on the results. First to be tackled was the Trip Around the Stars quilt (find my original post about this quilt top here).

This had been abandoned with about a quarter of the quilting completed, a widely spaced meander (ha!ha!) with occasional wonky five-point stars (inspired by one of the prints I’d bought from Sew Busy, Fleet). Definitely not perfect, the quilting is now done and I’ve made the binding too 🙂

With the sewing machine ready for FMQ I just changed the threads and set about completing the second UFO, my version of Suzy Quilts ‘Modern Fans’. The blocks of this quilt made an appearance on this blog in Nov 2021! All the open areas of off-white fabric needed to be quilted. I had toyed with idea of quilting (less than perfect) classic feathers in those spaces but felt the design might not look quite right against the modern symmetry of the echoed circles. In the end I chose to stitch a design with a central spine, like a feather, but with narrow, swirly tendrils instead of puffy plumes.

Again far less than perfect but DONE and, in keeping with the MEANDERING theme, completed with a genuine smile on my face (apart from when the thread broke!).

I made the binding too! In actual fact this quilt now has the binding machine stitched to the front so hand stitching it to the back is a relaxing project I can take beyond the sewing room.

I hope you can tell from this post that creative MEANDERING is bringing back the #funinmysewingroom vibe? I do hope, if needs be, you are able to free-up your creativity this year.

Allison