A Gizzy Quilt Anniversary

A year ago Mom made a simple request. Gizzy was sick, and she needed green papers to pay the v-e-t. Would anybody be interested in buying a quilt for a cat?

The answer was most emphatically, "Yes."

We had orders for 4 before noon. By the end of the first day, Mom had orders for 14. By the end of the first week, she had orders for 30.

Cat bloggers said she would be “Bizzy for Gizzy” and named the quilts “Gizzy Quilts.”

The quilts were also called Amazing Flying Technicolor Quilts, and they flew all over the US. Gizzy Quilts can also be found in New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, Austria and Germany. At this time, counting the Holiday Gizzy quilts, Mom has made and shipped over 150. She had expected to make maybe 5, and dreamed of making 10.

Mom has also made quilts for woofies, PTU’s, laptops and babybeans.
And she has donated several quilts to raise green papers for good causes, from DKM’s AIDS Walk to Monty Q’s Babybean medical expenses. We'll soon be doing a Gizzy Quilt Raffle to help Churchill.

All those quilts take a lot of fabric. At first, Mom used fabric from her own stash, but that ran out pretty quick. She received packages of fabric from several beans. Much of that was used for backings, but all of it was used. Mom has ordered over 200 yards of fabric from eQuilter in the last year, and over 52 yards of fleece.

She has made quilts of every color: blues, purples, greens, yellows, reds, pinks, browns, even black. Mom has satisfied requests for quilts with dragons, butterflies, fish, and tomatoes. Some beans want to make sure the quilt looks very good with their cat. Lookit this picture Beezer sent to prove he would look good with the quilt he wanted:The best part is reading stories of how cats love their quilts. Speedy drags his around. Daisy bunny kicks hers.
You can see pictures of cats and read their stories at the Bizzy for Gizzy blog. You can also watch the slideshow of all the quilts Mom has made so far.

I am very happy to be in the middle of this. It's fun to help Mom make quilts for cats, and to do my job to make sure they are purrfect. I like listening to the stories of all the cats and their quilts.

Thanks to everybody for keeping us Bizzy for Gizzy. I am sure Gizzy would be very proud.
Gosh, we miss him.

Sewing Sunday (really!)

Well, finally Mom is actually sewing those chunks together. This is one of her "blocks." The blocks for this quilt can be any height, but they have to be 20" wide. Mom will make a bunch of these big blocks, then sew them all together into long rows. The long rows will be 84" long and she will make three of them, then sew them together to make the twin-sized quilt. You've seen the chunks Mom cuts. Here is a finished block:
You can click to biggify the pictures. If you click this second one, you can see the separate chunks and how Mom has arranged them.Mom always tries to sew the pieces together in a straight line. Here you can see how the various chunks were combined to make the big block:
In this last picture, Mom has set the blocks she has made next to each other. This piece is about 46" long.
As you can see, a quilt like this can go together really fast.

*P.S. This quilt is going to The Furry Bambinos' Gramma. You can read about her here.

Supervising Sewing Saturday

Mom made 48 long strips of that fabric, and has been cutting those long pairs up into chunks.

She had 48 pairs, and has cut 36 of them into chunks:

I have been supervising, but I do not understand one thing. Cutting is taking things apart. Sewing is putting things together. Mom is cutting, not sewing, but today is Sewing Saturday.

How can that be? Tell me, please, because I just don't get it.

Funny Friday

Yo Mom, I have stuff to do, leave me alone. I'm not a fashion model!


Mom finished pressing all the long strips last night, and she just HAD to stay up late cutting a few into chunks. Here are a few of her favorites so far.

PS... We have a big anniversary coming up. Can anybody guess what it is?

Crazy Bean Twin Quilt

Poppy Q was right. It's a quilt for a bean twin bed. It is bright autumn fabrics of yellow, orange, gold and browns. Mom has washed and dried and ironed all the fabrics, and cut them into strips.

Tonight she paired them all up, then sewed them together, like a big chain.
Then she dumped them all on the table,
cut the threads between, and lay them out neatly, so they wouldn't get wrinkled.
Then she pressed them.
She matched and sewed them all. She still has to press about half.

Tonight she will start cutting these into chunks. It will probably take her three evenings to finish cutting them all apart.

You can see pictures of most of the fabrics over at Bizzy for Gizzy. Mom has updated the slide show, too!

Almost Wordless

Yo! Mom, over HERE! Yeah, that's better....

(P.S. Those strips up there aren't for a Gizzy Quilt...)

Two-fer Tuesday

Mom says both of us could be a little slimmer, so she will join me in "slimming down." I guess that means she won't be eating a whole bag of potato chips anytime soon. (She ate them because she was so nervous during the game. I don't need to tell you which game. It's the one that completely let us both down.) We're also going to get more exercise. She'll be on the inside moving sidewalk, and I'll be chasing the infamous Red Dot.

Two of us eating less.
Two of us getting more exercise.

Lucky me.





Not!

I am Excellent!

My dear friends Daisy Mae and Angus have both given me this wonderful award. I am so honored, especially as Mom has been very busy lately and I haven't been able to visit as many blogs as I want every day. Thank you so much, my dear friends.

I would like to give this award to: my pals Zippy, Speedy & Sadie, the Furry Bambinos, Poppy Q and Parker. And of course, my sweetheart Monty Q, who is Most Excellent!

Not Easy Sunday

Mom brought THIS home yesterday. The v-e-t wanted Mom to think about some special Obesity Management food by Purina which is by prescription. Mom would like to try a lower calorie food and see if that works. Mom used to give this to Gizzy and Jasmine, and she said it worked. So we shall see. Of course, if -I- am f-a-t, I can only imagine how many other f-a-t cats there are out there.
'Nuff said!

Moving on to another subject -- here are some of those fabric blocks Mom has been working on. After she cut them all up, and then mixed them up and sewed them back together again, she set them out on the floor. Then she started moving them around, and I helped quite a bit. But she didn't like the changes I made. Here is one section she thought was working well. As it turns out, she thinks she needs more blocks. So she will probably be making more later... but she has set this project aside for now. Do you know what she made yesterday afternoon?

She made a pillowcase.

The fabric is by Jane Sassaman, and Mom was inspired by her blog. Mom has had that fabric for a couple of years now, and didn't know what to do with it. She really wanted to use different fabrics like in the examples (see Jane's blog), but decided to make a simple pillowcase first, to see how she liked it. She only made ONE, and will probably make the second one today, while she frets about The Game.

After that, it's back to the Gizzy quilts (finally.)

Oh yeah, about The Game. We'll be watching, and keeping our fingers & paws crossed for a Perfect ending to a Perfect Season. And if you are rooting for the other guys, or if you hate the guys named Pat (because people tend to hate people who are Very Good at something), I don't want to hear it.

Mom did post a recipe suitable for Game Day over at her cooking blog.

(you can click the pictures to biggify)

Uh-oh! - - - Insulted!

This usually lives in Mom's closet. And my skinny Gizzy quilt is usually in the sewing room...

....

Update: Mom jammed me into the PTU and brought me to the v-e-t. The v-e-t said I was f-a-t! She said nobody would ever know I was formerly feral. I have lost 1/2 pound since last summer, but she said I should be a 10 pound kitty, not an 11-1/2 pound kitty.

I am insulted.

Finally! Friday - Updated!

Mom is home today. She says it is a "comp" day. I dunno what that means, but I think it has something to do with the fact she worked on Saturday and she worked until 9:30 PM this past Tuesday. Eek!

Anyway, she has finished 30 of those blocks. She said she needed 30, so why are there fabrics laid out for 13 more?She's just crazy.

Here's proof. Remember I said she was gonna cut these big blocks up? Well, here is how she will cut each block into four smaller pieces:
Then, she will rearrange the pieces, sort of like this:She will make a bean-sized bed quilt from these new pieces.

I am resting up for The Big Game on Sunday.

Thursday 13 - Updated!

You know, for a project that is supposed to be secret, Mom sure isn't being secretive. Two nights ago she made a big stack of fabric pairs to use to make the new blocks. She wanted to make 13 for today's Thursday 13. But she only finished 7. Here are the first 6 she finished.

She really likes this one with the flowers and the pink swirls.

Here are the last 6 that she's too tired to finish.

These big blocks are 14-3/4" square, and she says "Yes," she does plan to cut them up.

I'd say she's crazy, but let's face it, all she does is buy BIG pieces of fabric, cut them up into smaller pieces, and then sew them back up into BIG pieces of fabric again.

She's just crazy to start with.


Update Thursday night:

Mom finished those blocks Thursday night, but was "too tired" to post them before she went to bed. Sheesh!

W-W-Wordless

Family Tree Tuesday

I would like to introduce you to my Mom's family. They are my family too.

This is Mom. She is the oldest of four.This is Mr Photographer. He is next in line, lives near the Columbia River in Oregon, with his wife and their daughter (photos below).
This is Mr Cabinetmaker, he and his wife (sorry, no picture) live in the high desert in Colorado. He is the one who took Mim-may on a 1,000 mile motorcyle trip through Utah last year.This is the Karate Lady. She is 8 years younger than Mom. She is the Boy's mom.This is Mr Big, the Karate Lady's husband, and the Boy's father. He is VERY funny!This is the Boy, Mom's nephew. He will be 11 in March.This is Mim-may (Mom' s Mom) and Pip-pay.This the Boy and Mr Karate, Mom's son, (as you know).This is Mr Photographer's wife and daughter (the Pretty Girls)This is Mim-may and her three grandkids.So now you know who everybody is.