Modern and antique stitched cats

Detail of a group friendship quilt, from Cats on Quilts, p. 100

One of my favorite quilts books is written by quilt historian Sandi Fox - Cats on Quilts, published in 2000 by Harry N. Abrams. It's full of details of quilts featuring appliqued or embroidered felines.   It seems there a lot of overlap between cat-lovers and quilt makers.  I know from experience that no cat can resist settling on a heap of piled up fabrics.

So, for an introductory kantha stitching online workshop offered by quilter extraordinaire, Carol Anne Grotrian, I turned to this book as a source for my explorations.  Kantha stitching is a traditional process in which used saris are artfully layered and stitched into new bed covers; the artisans are women in Bangladesh and elsewhere on the Indian sub-continent. I first leaned about kantha in a workshop with Canadian artist Dorothy Caldwell.

The top  image is blurry, as it is in the book, but the stitching seems to say:

Tom, Dick and Harry

Vowed never to marry

In the Good Old Summer time

and the signature might be "Mrs. Fenton M. Smith", although it's hard to decipher.

This 1904 quilt was documented in the New York Quilt Project.

For my small project, I used two layers of unbleached muslin, scrap red fabric, a sashiko needle and sashiko thread, which is about the same weight as 6-strand embroidery floss. The solid red cat was needle-turn applique.  The stitched red cat was outlined in chain stitch, a traditional kantha technique, and the "fur" was just my mash-up of sashiko and kantha sewing.  Large running stitches, echoing the outlines of the moon and the kitties, filled the background.  Small stars are a special motif called a bhutti.  I did use a fine line chalk pencil to roughly sketch out the general direction of my stitching lines. 

The finished Cats and Moon below, photographed in raking light to show the texture created by the stitching.

My stitching, approximately 8" x 10".

The back. I didn't bother to bury the knots.

 

 

 

 I will probably back this little work with red fabric and make a small pillow or wall hanging.