Pounce! Grab, grab, grab! Mischief's trouble sensors were working full tilt again. My frisky kitty had discovered the new quilting project was underway, and he wasn't about to let any fun escape him. The fact that I was using extremely sharp shears and a rotary cutter didn't deter him in the least. In fact, he was alertly watching for chances to grab that cutter whenever my attention was too focused on it and the safety of my fingers to notice the swift approach of his paw.

I'd been wavering in my choices of what to make for my third project. Most quilters appear to have stashes of UFO's (unfinished objects) piled up among the fabric from enthusiastically piecing new tops but not quilting them. I have lots of US0's (unstarted objects), good ideas that get lost in the whirl of daily chores and various interruptions. I now had three circling in my head like jets over an airport, just waiting to run out of fuel and crash into USO heaven when more great ideas overloaded the system.

I had first thought about a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt from a piece of fabric with cute little frogs, bugs, and birds on it. I could fussy cut hexagons from the little critters and use the rest of the background with some additional fabrics to add to the yardage to make a fun little quilt. Somehow sanity reasserted itself when I kept reading how difficult it was to sew this quilt. Into the USO holding pattern went the idea.

Then I had thought about a sampler quilt to practice my piecing skills. The quilting stitch was pretty even now and getting smaller. My neatness in making nicely matched points and corners was not as good. I got a library book with a huge selection of patterns, but then that idea got into the USO holding pattern when I sorted through my fabrics and unearthed a cute teddy-bears-in-tutus print. I'd seen a nice block that would frame the little bears just perfectly. I even had some nice fabrics that went with that print beautifully. Then I started wondering if I had the skills to cut those little pieces nicely enough or would I waste the poor teddy bears. Aargh! Another idea went into the USO holding pattern.

I went into USO overload when the about.com quilting guide, Susan Druding, started a series on log cabin blocks. It's a simple strip pieced block where I could practice my cutting and piecing skills. I did have lots of strips from fussy cutting the floral patches for my previous two projects as well as some remnants which would go with them pretty well. I printed the article and spread the fabrics out to look at the yardage. Somehow, cutting that many plain strips wasn't quite enough to satisfy me. They didn't have a whole lot of contrast, either, like her brightly colored pictures. Hmmm . . .

That's when the frog quilt idea crashed into the log cabin idea and formed another great idea in flight. At least, I hope it's a great idea. Those hexagons are a pain to cut out, and they have stretchy bias sides. What if I added strips cut on the grain to those sides, like a log cabin block? If I built it up for several rows, I would end up with a hexagonal strippy patch with non-stretchy sides that was big enough that only a few would need to be sewn together to make a good sized quilt.

I cut out a few cute bugs, frogs, and fish with a small hexagon that was two inches across from point to point. I measured and snipped, trying to get a very well cut one. Then I cut some one inch wide strips from various colored fabrics. I first sewed some cream strips with a few flower pieces onto three sides of the hexagon, skipping a side between each one, with scant 1/4 inch seams. I pressed them with the seam allowances away from the hexagon under the strips. I put my ruler along the skipped sides and trimmed the strips even with it to make a triangle with the trimmed strips forming the points. Then I added strips along those skipped sides, sewing from the point of one triangle across the hexagon side to the point of the other triangle. I trimmed across the point of the triangles to flatten those sides, forming a hexagon again.

I added two more rounds like that, and will probably add another round in a single color to form the sashing to connect the blocks together. I'm definitely getting lots of practice with cutting and piecing, and the blocks are getting more regular as I go. I'm also getting lots of practice in patience through tribulation, since Rascal soon joined his brother in playing with the fabric strips and equipment. The cats are thoroughly addicted to the joys of biting fabric, the sewing machine, and the iron, too. I scolded and moved them out of harm's way and put them out, only to have someone else let them back in again.

When they decided to have a fight right in the middle of it all, I finally sat back and watched them tussle as fabric strips scooted around their scrabbling feet while they maneuvered for position. I wondered how many times the Lord lovingly sits back and marvels while His children are playing with anything but the project He was working on with them. These cats are definitely not working on the same project that I am. Once I get it pieced together so there aren't so many enticing loose ends, they should settle down and lose interest, but scrappy strip projects take a lot of piecing and that means a lot of feline tribulation before this top is pieced. Maybe that is the project the Lord is working on right now.

Here's my third quilting project, a small strip-pieced quilt about 22 inches wide by 32 1/2 inches long. It's been quite a learning experience, both in quilting techniques and in stretching my boundaries.

The about.com quilting forum and the Delphi quilting arts forum have groups of quilters who like to challenge each other to make all sorts of different quilts. What they come up with is amazing. These are genuinely works of art beyond the traditional quilts that most people think of when you tell them that you are working on a quilt, although they have plenty of traditional quilts as well. I got intrigued with the strip piecing articles that the guide on the quilting forum had been posting, and decided to leap into one with both feet, no pattern from a book or magazine at all.

The first hexagons were a bit lopsided, but improved with practice. It felt rather like I was back in elementary school learning to write with my big, fat pencil as I used my rotary cutter and triangle ruler to measure and trim the blocks with each new strip. My cats were fascinated with all those wriggling strips heaped up in irresistible piles and slithering along the table as I pulled each color from its pile to add it to the block. I spent as much time rescuing the strip from the cat as sewing it on. That's part of the fun of quilt making with your cats, and boy oh boy, did we have fun!

By the time I had enough blocks done to piece the center panel, I'd used up most of the light blue fabric that I intended to use to sash them together. I managed to sew them together despite a few little mismatches in the sides, okay, lots of mismatches in the sides in the first blocks, and put in wedges of fabric to even out the sides. Oh no, I miscut one of the big pieces to go in the half-hexagon spots at the middle of the top and bottom sides. I managed to cut another piece that was mostly blue with a little bit of green on one side and put it in the bottom spot, but if you look closely you'll see a bee flying upside down in it. Okay, I'm counting that as a humility patch so I don't get too proud of the perfection of the quilt. You can see it in the close-up below with the fish block shown in the earlier essay and one corner showing the strip-pieced border.

I didn't get to try the edging technique I asked about in the forum because the machine quilting ran to the edges of the quilt, so I'll see if I can try it in the next project. Yes, I have more USO's in orbit now, and got another quilting book of block patterns to fuel it. The sewing machine is at the ready, so I'll soon be back to piecing again.