Pet projects

Except that I thought they were the female version of dogs, I don't think I had a particular interest in cats until I was 6 or so. That's when my dad took me to the farm of one of the milk producers who supplied his cheese business and let me pick out my first kitten.

She was a little yellow fluff ball I named Cookie. Sadly, Cookie didn't last long: she had a habit of crawling into the wheel well of the car and was run over by my dad as he and my mom pulled out of the driveway on their way to see the movie, "How the West Was Won." (I implore you: do not ask if Cookie crumbled.) Usually my mom would get onto her knees to make sure the cat wasn't in the way, but this was the night she was wearing her Schiaparelli silk stockings, which she didn't want to run. At no other time in my life has fashion trumped a pet, and the fur that clings to my clothes every day is proof.

Anyway, Cookie was the first in a long line of pet cats, many of whom met unfortunate ends. My feline fortune seemed to change when, a year after we married, my husband came home with Cocoa, the doyenne of the Adams clowder. Cocoa lived to be 21 and was the most beautiful black cat I've ever seen, although in her waning years she became a literal shadow of herself, rail thin and matted, but still bright-eyed. Her best friend, Penny, died soon after at age 19. We currently have a six pack, including youngsters Thor and Daisy, who are this blog's mascot.

Although I've yet to adopt a cat from Friends for Life in the Houston Heights, I'm a fan of the no-kill shelter for cats and dogs. They're always generous about letting me visit their cats and kittens, all of whom seem so happy and well cared-for. Their facility is clean and bright, their volunteers are warm and welcoming -- it's a happy place. Friend them on Facebook and you'll see.

You might remember that I used a lot of my scraps as filler for bird nesting boxes. Incredibly, I have a ton (well, several pounds) left and I'm going to use them to stuff cat beds for Friends for Life. (OK, this may not look like much, but the bag of scraps is quite heavy. A lot of the new scraps are from the No-Match Star quilt because in the unique construction process you cut off pairs of small triangles. I asked Jane Hardy Miller, the pattern designer, how to best use the leftover triangles. She told me it's ok to throw them away. I'm sure she meant, stuff a cat bed with them, you crazy woman.)

Although I have a lot of cat-themed fabric, I'm going for irony with the first bed and using a leftover from a commission I had last summer. A friend asked me to make quilts for her nieces, each based upon the individual girl's interests. Because one loves dogs, I couldn't resist buying this fabric, which I found online.

Cute, right? Watch dog. Puppy love. Dog gone. You get the motifs.

Unfortunately, it also has this one, which was not shown on the fabric shop previews.

Now, I was not about to be the one to have to explain this to a child -- oh, yes, it means the dog shops at all the best boutiques but be sure to never say anything about that at school because it's a secret -- so I had to do a lot of fussy-cutting to eliminate it.

Friends for Life has assured me that their cats can't read, so I think it will be ok.

How big is a scrap?

Many of you know that I am dressed by birds and mice every morning in the little sparkling Disney world in which I live. (Interestingly, when my daughter was little she called me Ariel for three weeks after she saw the movie, "The Little Mermaid.")

It's no secret that I accumulate cats easily and that I can relate pretty well to even the snarliest feline. Although I'm less of a fan of dogs, I managed to charm/wrangle two pit bulls who invaded my table at last year's neighborhood garage sale (I didn't realize they were pit bulls until one of the shoppers expressed utter amazement at my lack of fear around them.). I still insist that a trio of baby squirrels who were born in one of our trees made daily visits to me while I worked in the yard, and that they smiled at me. When my friend was a wildlife rehabilitator, we took two tiny chicks through the Chick Fil A drive through, chastening the workers for serving such animals (on a bun, not as customers). I made a purple net tutu for her wild boar, Charlotte, so she could appear in Swine Lake. There are actual, unretouched photos of me with raccoons in my hair.

So, when I was trying to figure out something to do with the teeny scraps that I'm accumulating at a pretty rapid rate right now, animals came to mind.

The problem with scraps is that it's difficult to throw them away because they represent so much potential. Of course, the concept of scraps means different things to different sewists. My friends who make garments will discard anything less than a half-yard, which represents an awful lot of fabric to a quilter. The last time I was at Quiltworks, they said that one of their groups makes quilts with two-inch squares. So I set that as my standard. I would keep any scrap that I could reduce to at least one 2 x 2-inch square. I credit the inventor of Progressive lenses with my ability to do so.

Still, when you straighten the grain or trim off a selvage, you wind up with a long, skinny piece of fabric. And regardless of how careful you are with your cutting, there are always stragglers left behind.

After talking with a few of my more eco-aware friends, I decided to use my current scraps two ways.

First, I made a nesting box for birds -- something they can either nest in or from which they can gather materials to create a nest elsewhere. I cleaned and cut a hole in a quart-size milk carton, filled it with thin fabric strips less than eight inches long and hung it in my backyard crepe myrtle tree.

Then, I contacted my favorite no-kill pet shelter -- Friends for Life in the Houston Heights -- and asked if they would accept my donation of pet beds stuffed with fabric scraps. They enthusiastically agreed.

Today, when I was taking the photos for this post, I noticed there's a nest in the crepe myrtle, just five or six inches above the nesting box. I thought I had seen a lot of bird activity there -- it's right outside my kitchen window so I can watch what's going on -- but I didn't realize there had been nest-building. It has to be new because we had pruned the crepe myrtle back in February, effectively defoliating it. But it's not so new as to contain any fabric, I'm sure.

Still, there was a mom in the nest when I started taking photos; she flew away when I moved the nesting box so I could get a better shot.

And I'm pretty sure she smiled at me.