It's 9:05 A Stitchin' Time

Wow! It's hard to believe we are already in the second week of March & that we are now almost done with the 5th challenge of Project Quilting Season 9. One challenge left to go before the season is over for the year. 

I have noticed a connection between the release of the challenges and stormy winter weather here in South Dakota and this challenge was no different. Our snow was almost gone & as soon as the challenge was announced the snows started again! LOL 

The weekend was our calm before the storm, so we fed the livestock extra rations, got the generators ready, picked up extra groceries, & I picked through my stash & moved some supplies down to the basement where I could work in warmth if the power went out. 

The challenge for the week was released at noon Sunday, "A Stitch In Time" but I wasn't in any big hurry to think about what I was going to do, I was counting on at least one blizzard day to stay home and work on it, maybe more if we had the 8-12 inches of snow predicted dumped on us! 

The first rule of the challenge was 1. Your project must literally or figuratively interpret the idiom "a stitch in time saves nine"

How better to start a challenge about a saying that some sources say is about procrastination than to actually procrastinate! I did spend some time on Sunday thinking about what I was going to do and researching to get some ideas, but not very enthusiastically. All I could think of was MICE, which made no sense & had nothing to do with procrastination or stitching anything.

I knew there was something I wasn't remembering about mice & sewing so I googled 
sewing mice & there it was! The Beatrix Potter story of the Tailor of Gloucester. For those of you who don't know the story, 

The Tailor of Gloucester is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, privately printed by the author in 1902. The story is about a tailor whose work on a waistcoat is finished by the grateful mice he rescues from his cat and was based on a real world incident involving a tailor and his assistants.

A tailor in Gloucester sends his cat Simpkin to buy food and a twist of cherry-coloured silk to complete a waistcoat commissioned by the mayor for his wedding on Christmas morning. Whilst Simpkin is gone, the tailor finds mice the cat has imprisoned under teacups. The mice are released and scamper away. When Simpkin returns and finds his mice gone, he hides the twist in anger.

The tailor falls ill and is unable to complete the waistcoat, but, upon returning to his shop, he is surprised to find the waistcoat finished. The work has been done by the grateful mice. However, one buttonhole remains unfinished because there was "no more twist!" Simpkin gives the tailor the twist to complete the work and the success of the waistcoat makes the tailor's fortune.

So MICE it was going to be! But this was going to be a different story....

Remember every fall when we would head back to school & our teachers would ask us to write an essay about "What I did on my summer vacation"? 

Well this past year my summer vacation consisted of rescuing wild barn kittens, 16 of them to be exact. Rescuing them from the evil jaws of a little killing machine named Cookie. Poor Cookie, she doesn't know any better because her father was a Jack Russell & killing things is in her blood. She kills muskrats, raccoons, rabbits, snakes, prairie dogs, pheasants, last winter she tried to kill a buck deer, she sometimes forgets her mother was a corgi so even though her fighting spirit is very large, her legs are very short! 

After finding too many murdered kittens over the past few years, I decided this year I wasn't going to stand for it, we love Cookie too much to get rid of her, spankings don't work & she isn't going to change her evil ways. But I knew if I could find the kittens when they were small enough I could save them & give them away or at least grow them big enough to defend themselves! 

So that is what we did, the grand kids & I crawled through hay bales & hunted cats all summer long, we were able to capture a couple batches, move them to the porch & tamed them down enough to give them all away. But the old black momma cat had her kittens high up in the hay & she kept them there. We wanted those kittens, they were so beautiful! 5 little black tuxedo cats, with strange markings & inquisitive personalities. They looked like little scarecrows, or a straight flush in a poker hand.

We finally were able to catch one & moved him to the quilt shop, where we named him Squidward & got so attached to him, he is still there. The other 4 have now grown enough to defend themselves against the dogs & hold court on the quilt shop deck. So instead of 4 barn cats we now have 9 but one of them is .5 of the time a house cat LOL 

Squid & his cousin Shadow

Squidward 

So back to Project Quilting 9.5! I started thinking about those cats, and what hunters they are, we very seldom see mice & in the past have been overrun by cottontails, but not anymore, we have 9 very capable mouse hunters who some days we will see hunting way out on the prairie for birds and voles.

Then I thought about all those poor little mice who have to hide for their lives from the evil barn cats & I decided I would do my quilt story about them. So I painted 9 little mice, sewing little cat masks that they could wear when they had to venture out of their nests & trick the cats into thinking they were  just another one of the many barn cats! 

There is just something about little creatures doing people things, that I love, my favorite books growing up were "The Wind in the Willows",  "The Chronicles of Narnia" & all the Beatrix Potter books. I don't know if it was the actual stories I loved or the images of the little creatures dressed in people clothes, brandishing swords & going on adventures! 

                        My favorite mouse is the one brandishing the needle!

I didn't add clothes to my mice because I wanted the masks to be the subject of the story, I always think of Mardi Gras when I think of masks so I added little green sequins and black beads to the eyes on the masks.

I also added a teacup to reference the story of the "Tailor of Gloucester" since I had taken the sewing mice idea from that story. I also added a clock & set the time at 9:05 to represent the number of the challenge.

Then of course last but not least, I added an evil green eyed tuxedo cat peeking 

through a knot hole while the mice frantically sew their masks! 

 I thought I had a piece of mouse fabric in my stash that I wanted to use on the border of the quilt, but while I was digging for it, I found this fun green piece that I thought looked like the cat eyes. So when I quilted it I sort of haphazardly quilted the shape of eyes. The finished quilt is 19 X 13.

Since we didn't have school & it was a raging blizzard outside, I had no where else to go but to the couch in front of the fire & the TV so I spent all day Monday painting my little project.  On Tuesday evening I added my borders, quilted & added the binding. I couldn't believe I had the entire project done by Tuesday night, and if I hadn't procrastinated :) on Sunday I would have actually had it all done on Monday night!
We have one more challenge after this one. I hope the weather patterns change & we have nothing but warm days & spring rains from now on! We start calving the week the next challenge goes up & we don't need a raging blizzard or baby calves in the basement! 

 

As for all those crazy barn cats, I am going to capture them one by one & they are going to go to the vet to get fixed. Although we loved every minute of it, & there is nothing sweeter than watching kids play with kittens, I am done with kitten adventures for a few years!