A Crafty Cat Experiment

When Alyssa Thomas of Penguin and Fish asked me if I wanted to stitch one of her Crafty Cat patterns as part of a no-instructions-experiment I just couldn't say no! I love trying new things (including other people's patterns which I rarely have time for sadly) and the first time I saw the pattern I knew I wanted to do a 'furry' version featuring one of my own cats. Actually I should mention that there are two patterns, this one with the Quilt Cat and a 'Knitters' version featuring a Cat with yarn. As I quilt and don't knit, I went for the Quilt Cat. :)  

Milo follows me around the house all day so he was the best candidate to 'model'. As you can see he's a very good at it too, following my directions exactly: "Give me your best I-want-that-Quilt-block look!" and "Show me some Paws!" 

 I had a lot of fun making this embroidery and as it's a bit bigger than the embroideries I usually make I mostly used two strands of floss instead of just one. Apart from the furry stitching I loved embroidering the quilt block. I added the heart and 'hand quilted' details. I used the Sun Print Text fabric by Alison Glass as background fabric. Normally I would go for a fabric that's a little sturdier for my Furry Stitching but it held up quite well underneath all those stitches.

I tend to add all kinds of bells and whistles when I design an embroidery pattern and this experiment reminded me that I don't always need to be so fussy because a fab simple design can be very effective too!

The Craft Cat patterns are available as PDF's here (at $6 each), and you can read more about the 'experiment' and what other stitchers made on Alyssa's blog!