The Kitties Are Born!

I may have lured you here with false advertising. There are no squirmy newborns here, nuzzling a mama cat :) But there are a couple of these:

These kitties are inspired by some I saw at a friend's house, but hers were made of plain muslin. Let me tell you how I made them. I started by tracing a cat figure on some paper, and then cutting it out with a seam allowance around the edge.

Then I found some fabric. This is odd stuff - I got it for 50¢ at a resale store. It's a piece of fabric with all the pieces to make a vest, plus the instructions, already printed on the fabric. Perhaps you've seen something like it. Anyway, I had no desire for a pink vest with hearts all over it, but I did think the fabric itself was cute, so ...

I cut my kitties out of it, noting what I was placing on the kitty's front. I cut out a front and back, and put right sides together, of course.

Then I hand stitched around the edge, leaving the bottom edge open.

And then I turned it, using a needle to help me get the corners of the ears and tail all the way reversed. I pushed sheet batting up into the kitty, using an old ice pick to help get it into all the nooks and crannies. Then I stitched closed the bottom, and squashed the batting around a little to even it out. A Sharpie fine-line pen was perfect for drawing on her little face. The ribbon? It was lying around, and looked cute around her neck. I'm making a few kitties for a college girl who is away from us (sniff!), and for a younger sister who's eying them wistfully :)

We went to a birthday party for a little girl yesterday, so I decided to paint a new "Little Pom" for her, and put her in a homemade frame:

The cardboard is part of a Frosted Flakes box, so its backside was rather ugly. I covered it up with a layer of batting, and then some of the kitty fabric, and stapled it along the edge. Not very fancy, but sometimes a homemade present is fun to receive.