Twelve Cats of Christmas

I bought this The Twelve Cats of Christmas cloth book panel at at a quilt, craft, and sewing festival in February 2014 during my "buy every cloth book you see" phase. At the same time I also bought a panel for a cloth book titled The Twelve Dogs of Christmas. I recently made up the canine version into a set of six placemats, written up in my post for 12/17/18. This post is very similar to that one for the dogs. I made this panel up into six placemats also.

The lyrics are delightful, a parody of the Twelve Days of Christmas, but I felt that I missed my mark by letting this fabric linger too long in my stash. My daughter's children, ages 3 and 6, are too old for cloth books, but the family does have two cats. I repurposed the panel into a set of six placemats. I've previously repurposed a cloth book into a graphic novel for this family, a process I detailed in my 11/19/14 post for The Mitten. (Although too old for a cloth book, a graphic novel like their dad reads was more acceptable.)

This "book" comes from a panel printed by Elizabeth's Studio. I gravitate toward the fabrics of this mill who adapts the artwork of talented artists into screen printed images. These illustrations of twelve cats in various poses is from the work of artist Kevin Whitlark.

I chose to border the pages of the book with a grass green fabric by Stacy Hsu for Moda with images of bottles of milk. It is from her line Farm Fun. It wasn't until I was taking pictures of the selvages for this post that I noticed the designer. I love just about everything by Stacy Hsu. I am not surprised I bought this fabric "just to have" because it called to me.

I wondered what to use for the backing. This gift print had the right green, the pinks and reds echo the panel illustrations, and the gifts seems to fit in perfectly with a Christmas theme. The panel and both the border and backing fabrics came from my stash. It is a good feeling when you find exactly what you want within your own shelves and drawers.

The panel consists of six double book pages, ordered so they are in the correct sequence when made into a book. I cut them into twelve single pages and regrouped with two on a placemat. I had to do some finagling since the cover pages are bigger and need narrower borders to make all six placemats the same size. Fortunately I had saved the calculations from my set of dog placemats which made my job easier.

In an assembly line process, I layered the batting, the backing right side up, and the bordered cat illustration front face down. Here the six are ready to be sewed around four sides with an opening in the bottom for turning. The first and last placemats in the staggered stack have thinner side borders and narrower top and bottom borders because they came from the book cover pages which are larger.

And here are the six completed placemats. They measure slightly under 14" high by 18"wide. With those dimensions I get six backings out of one yard of fabric. I topstitched ⅛" from all outer edges and stitched in the ditch in the borders and down the center. I was considering some free motion quilting in the central portion of the panels themselves but did not want to "scribble" over the artwork. I then realized the bamboo batting I used allowed quilting up to 8" spacing. The placemats met that criterion so I quit while I was ahead and declared them finished.

In case the print is not legible here is the summary of the lyrics:

1. a fat mouse in a fur tree
2. two tomcats twisting
3. three fluffy Persians
4. four floating kitties
5. five goldfish
6. six furballs feasting
7. seven siamese sailing
8. eight felines fishing
9. nine pussycats playing
10. ten tabbies bathing
11. eleven moggies leaping
12. twelves cats a' clawing

For the eleventh day of Christmas I had to look up what moggie meant because I had never heard the term. A moggie is a cat that is not purebred. A moggie is to a feline what a mutt is to a canine. Live and learn. Can you imaging your home if it had twelve cats a' clawing in it? In my humble opinion that is not a great Christmas gift from your "true cat"! But here is a "true cat" belonging to the family about to receive these placemats. Orange tabby Elliot, in my daughter's lap, is allowing himself to be used as a pillow by blue-shirted three-year-old Isaiah, also sharing that same lap. I have shipped these placemats off to Oklahoma but I will also share their construction by linking up with Let's Bee Social #255.