Emergency Baby Quilt

Monday night when I got home from a  Quilt Guild meeting, my Hunny reminded me of a Baptism we need to attend on Sunday, which was only 5 days away.)  Yes, I remembered.  Oh, and by the way, "do you think you could whip up a baby quilt that we can give as a gift?"  ARGHHHHH!

But I can do it.  I have an idea for a cool baby quilt from a picture I saved from the web. Since this is for a girl baby, my cats will all be pink be pink.  It will look something like this:

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It said on the web that this quilt will finish off at 41".  That's all I had to go by, I do not have a pattern.  Just the name of the quilt (Cat Nap), it's finished size, and this picture.  So I started doing the math. Trial and error in the beginning, but then REAL math for the corner triangles.  Starting with a 25" center square on point, add a 2.5" border, so it is now 29".  The formula for corner triangles, is finished block size divided by 1.414 plus 7/8" for seam allowances (round up to the nearest 1/8"), which will equal the size of the square you need to cut in half on the diagonal for 2 corners.  SO! 29 divided by 1.414 is about 20.5", plus 7/8"would = 21 3/8".  I used  a 22" square just to be on the safe side, yes, it was a little larger than necessary, but I could easily trim it to size and leave that quarter inch seam allowance for sewing on the final border.  The head is a 7.5" square, the shoulders is a 3.5" square cut in half on the diagonal, and the ears are 60 degree triangles cut at 2.5" tall.  Paws are 3" x 5", rounded off on one end and appliqued on after the border was sewn.  There, that's my pattern!

I went off to the fabric store to get some fleece for the backing, and decided against an outer border.  I whipped up this quilt from start to finish in just 4 days.  Here is my version of Cat Nap, front and back!

  

The original quilt had claws on the cat too, which I decided to leave off.  Claws on kitties make them mean or mad, which is cute, but not for a baby.  (my opinion).  I also used circles of a reddish pink batik for the eyes, and added black pupils in the circles.  I think it's very cute!

Cute eyes

I basically did this the same as I did the seasonal Skinnies, applique the pieces, and stitch all around.  I added more quilting then on a skinnie though.  Also, I free-motioned the  whiskers and mouth before I added that square to the quilt so black thread wouldn't show on the back of the quilt.  I didn't want to use the applique stitch for the eyes and noses, the curves are pretty tight.  So I did a very small zigzag around them, and that worked perfectly.  All done in less than 4 days.  I'm pretty proud of myself!