I've Been Thinking

I have been doing a lot of hand quilting on this...
my "Fat Cat" wallhanging I showed you previously. Earlier this month I joined the "One Project a Month Challenge" and since cats are my favorite animal and I have many, many cat projects in various stages of completion, I jumped right in. I love to hand quilt, it can be very relaxing to me, but for some reason it gets put on the back burner a lot. Anywho, when I do take the time to hand quilt I find that my mind takes me to places I really need to ponder. Naturally I'm thinking about all the projects I need to finish and wondering which one I will choose to finish next. That brings me to fabrics. So what else is new? What quilter doesn't think about fabric every day. We ponder the fabrics we are currently using, the fabrics we have used, the fabrics we want to use, the fabrics we just bought, or the fabrics we want to buy and of course there is always the fabrics in our stash, and that is where my mind landed. One of my goals this year is to use a lot from my stash so when I wasn't hand quilting I was going through my stash. I found a big box of cheater panels. When our Walmart still sold fabric I purchased a lot of panels, just because they were pretty. I haven't used any of them and I know I'm not going to use them but there they were, looking at me with determination that they needed used. Ok, OK. Most of the panels are very pretty and colorful and I know I can cut them into strips for my calendar quilt (that is a whole other blog subject) but the cat panels are just too pretty to cut into strips. Look at this...I have two of these cuties...

and two of these...

look at this darling bunch...

I have two of each of these cats...

and two of each of these...

and these..

and this collection that begs not to be cut into strips.

What is a quilter to do? After much consideration and brainstorming it finally dawned on me. Use them for quilt backs. Dah! They will work nicely when combined with coordinating fabric for small or large projects. AHHHH...I feel so much better knowing that my kitties are going to be used in quilts without being cut into strips.