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History of the Web site, and the book's rocky road into print.
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Proof that all our needlework projects come from a higher source!
Is there a special guy in your life who helps you run your quilting Web site, who drives you to fabric stores, who humors you with "Honey, but that quilt looks lovely!" when you're too embarrassed to even pull it out of the closet? Honor your special guy here in our special feature Quilt Guy of the Month!
Looking for information on how to use a sewing machine with a blow stick or help for quilting if your eyesight is failing? Here's some help.
Is your cat from outer space or has she simply been abducted by aliens? Find out here.
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Excerpts from "Cats Who Quilt! The First Quilting Book for Cats!"
Written by Judy Heim, Illustrated by Irina Borisova
"Suzy, the Cat Angel & Feather Toys of Heaven"
When Jean’s cat Suzy was alive the tiny cat would perch like a guardian angel behind her shoulder, on the back of the couch, as Jean quilted. Sometimes Jean thinks Suzy is still there, watching over her.
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Jean Hollack claims that she doesn’t have a cat--not anymore. But sometimes when she is quilting late at night, after everyone else in the house is asleep, she catches, in a corner of her eye, a glimmer of a cat tail waving in a shadow of her sewing room. Or she hears the click of toenails padding over the wooden floor, stepping toward her. Sometimes she even thinks she hears a soft meow, but she knows she is mistaken, because Jean doesn’t have a cat, not anymore.
When Jean’s cat Suzy was alive the tiny cat would perch like a guardian angel behind her shoulder, on the back of the couch. Or Suzy would lay across the couch back, with one delicate paw touching Jean’s shoulder as she stitched. Sometimes Jean thinks the cat is still sitting there, a long velvet, patchy-colored paw stretched out, touching her shoulder.
Jean has recently completed a quilt which confirms this belief. A crazy quilt, like the ones Suzy especially liked to lie on because she liked the feel of the different patched velvets and cool silks against her thinly furred belly, like the ones who’s dark uneven fabrics resembled Suzy’s mottled-colored fur, it is striated with feather stitches. Wild, flamboyant feather stitches pluming and curling everywhere in many different colors.
She calls it Feather Toys of Heaven. She thinks it is Suzy’s way of telling her that heaven is full of feather toys that wave and dance for playful cat spirits like her to bat at. And she is right.
"Quilting Lesson #1 for Cats: What to Do With An Ironing Board"
Start your quilting session by jumping on top the ironing board. Sit very still and pretend. Pretend that you are a jungle cat perched on a high precipice and gazing out over the plains. Pretend that you are a lion preparing to leap atop a sewing machine.
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If you are a cat who is new to quilting the first piece of sewing room equipment that you will find yourself drawn to is the ironing board. Like a catwalk stretching over a sea of dropped pins and fabric, the ironing board rises magnificently from a corner of the sewing room beckoning you to jump on it. While humans might argue that these padded catwalk wannabees were created for the intention of ironing things flat, we cats know that they were actually designed for sitting atop and daydreaming. More specifically, they were invented for perching on and pretending that one is a panther crouched on a high precipice and gazing out over the plains.
To this I will add that this is a perfect way to begin a quilting session. Jump on the ironing board, sit very still and pretend. Pretend that you are a lion about to rush through the jungle and leap atop a sewing machine. Pretend that you are a cougar preparing to bare your powerful claws and pull a spool of thread from a sewing basket. Pretend that you are a leopard about to roar and knock scissors on the floor. Each of these moves must be considered carefully, for artists are careful creatures.
Whatever you do, as you daydream, do not tip the ironing board over. Panthers never tip over their mountain precipices. Nor should you let your tail flip too near the hot iron perched on the board. If it does, the iron might scorch it. And what will happen then? Your human will scoop you up and rush you to a vet who will soothe your tender tail and may send you home with a pink bow tied around your neck. And everyone knows that pink bows do not become fearsome panthers, even those who quilt.
"Twinkle Tess and Bumblebees-In-A-Hurry"
Twinkle-Tess enjoys letting the patches fall where they may. She believes it's important to have a human quilting assistant who will clean up after any intensively creative quilting session.
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Sometimes her quilts look like nothing but scattered fabric patches. Indeed, Twinkle herself--so named after her light-footed "twinkletoes"--admits that some of her quilts have required less than thirty seconds to assemble. That’s all the time she needs, she says, to run into her human's sewing room, scamper over the quilt, and race out the door. Although the exhausted artist occasionally returns to the sewing room to sit in the center of the quilt to howl pitifully for something to eat, she prefers to let the patches fall where they may. On most days she leaves the whole mess to her human assistant to sew together.
Wings-A-Flutter is Twinkle’s interpretation of what Kansas Dugout quilt blocks would look like if pigeons were to weave them into a nest and scatter them on balconies. Bumblebees-In-A-Hurry reflects her struggle to depict what a Log Cabin quilt would look like if one threw it over a picnic table, spilled a can of Diet Pepsi on it, and let the bumble-bees carry it off.
Tess believes that in the future other animals besides cats will quilt--ostriches, for example. She believes that if other species were only given the opportunity to run into a sewing room and run out, great art could be achieved.
Cats Who Quilt is a trademark of Fruitful Plains. Text on this Web site Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001,
2002 Judy Heim. May not be reproduced in any form--in either e-mail
messages or on Web sites without written permission. All illustrations are
copyright 2000, 2001, and 2002 Irina Borisova. They may not be reproduced
without permission. Photos and quilts are copyrighted by their respective
artists, and may not be reproduced without their permission.
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