I came across this great poster and slogan at the bottom of a blog post recently of Cindy of Live a Colorful Life.   I’ve taken the liberty of anglicising it…..

I’m sure I’m not the only person who sews or crafts generally who acknowledges that penny for penny we are not usually saving money when we do our thing. OK the end result is unique, exactly to our taste (if it goes to plan) and usually satisfying and pleasurable to make although, those crucial matters aside, is it value for money?

I was reminded of this when I made some quilt blankets for our new kitten and a couple of quilts for the dogs of a friend. Altogether the cost of these quilts came to something like £95 for the fabric and batting. At our local  pet store these £8 blankets are for comparison.

 

Do I begrudge the extra expenditure?  Not one bit of it. I love seeing hand made articles around the house and it gives me pleasure to create and gift items even if it is to a cat or dog who would probably be just as happy with an old jumper or manky  piece of fleece

Mindyou on this occasion it is for a very special cat, our new kitten Felix.

We haven’t got him yet, just a few more weeks to wait but finishing his quilt was my One Monthly Goal with Patty at Elm Street Quilts.

I managed to get some lovely soft flannels although they are much harder to get than in the US. The rather purply pink colour was a bit of surprise compared to the online picture of the fabric but I hope Felix will be in touch with his feminine  side. I went for straight  forward half square triangles but flannel is quite stretchy and slippery – I should really have used more pins but I’m always impaling myself on them so try to avoid them as much as possible. But getting this in perspective it is a quilt for a cat who is hardly going to mind the misaligned seams and the odd point missing. After a bit of a break from sewing because of Easter travels and essential gardening which eats into spare time, it was good to make something that didn’t require a great deal of thought.

Of course despite the c£30 cost per quilt I was left with a load of scraps both of the backing fleece, wadding and flannel. Perfect for a bonus quilt.

I rather indiscriminately sewed all the scraps together but it looked frankly rather inspiring so I decided to slash and resew to break up the large blocks of colour. I got the idea from Chrissie of Made by Chrissie D who had won the block lotto of her quilting guild which is where those who want to participate bring a quilt block of the theme for that month and somebody wins them all and has the makings of a quilt. That month the theme was low volume but boy did that confuse people because Chrissie got a very odd bunch of blocks. She was far too kind to say so not least I suspect because her quilt guild members are probably readers of her blog. But she had the brilliant idea of sewing them altogether and then continually cutting and resewing to get a better distribution. In the end the final quilt was beautiful albeit much smaller. So I’d thought I would have a go …

This is stage 1

Stage 2…..

And stage 3 the finished quilt. I think it is certainly more interesting that at stage 1.

As you can see I tried to get some wonkiness in to add to its improv look but not too much as I didn’t want to make it too small. Overall I think it’s quite effective. And it of course reduced my cost per item to c £22!

So just waiting until there’s a sweet kitten sleeping on it…..

 

Linking to Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation, Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts and Patty at Elm Street Quilts. Post Scropt

 

Post Script

I couldn’t help showing you a picture of Felix’s litter. Look at the one on the left sleeping on his back. He obviously had a good lunch.