Quilts and Pets: A Match Made in Heaven

I need to make more pet quilts. They're small, quick and easy, and our furry friends are very forgiving about mistakes. And while they may not ooh and ahh over your choice of $12/yard designer fabric, they'll love it because it was made by you.

I discovered Tacy Gray, a quilt designer, who had eight tips for making a quilt for a pet. In essence, she suggests keeping it simple, skipping the binding, and pretty much just steaming through it. I like her style.

I've made a few quilts for the pets in my life, in fact pet quilts were part of the prescription cocktail that got me through the pandemic in 2020. They were all inspired by a quilt that my friend Judy made for my dog Abby when we first brought her home from the rescue.

Apparently, Judy was making these patchwork quilts for anyone who adopts a rescue dog. When she found out we were getting Abby, she called me and asked, "What's her favorite color?"

"Um, green?"

Ten years later and this quilt is now Abby's car quilt, keeping her cozy and comfy in her back seat and saving our car interior. Isn't it cute?

Fast forward to 2020 when I was churning out quilts and I decided to pay it forward to some pets in my life.

I made this rag strip quilt for my daughter's cat, Cat, who is living with us until her birth mother can find an apartment that allows cats.

I had a fun, colorful jellyroll and decided to try my hand at a rag seam. Thinking Cat would love the rough and scrumbly quilt, I powered through fluffing all those seams until I had blisters on my fingers and then nearly killed my dryer (a dryer's death by lint is not an easy thing to watch), only to find that Cat prefers the smooth back of the quilt. Eye roll. Here is Miss Thang herself.

For my son and his husband's sphynx, I went for smooth. I had just finished Tula Pink's City Sampler quilt and I had some favorite blocks that I wanted to repeat. So I designed this quilt for Luna, the hairless cat, who has very sensitive skin . . . as you can imagine . . .

I used fabric scraps I had lying around and some very cute fabric of cats wearing glasses. Here is Luna, enjoying not so much the quilt, but the box it came in.

If this isn't a creature that needs a quilt, I don't know what is.

That same Christmas, I made this little quilt for Hugo, a French Bulldog near and dear to my heart. I had fabric with little Frenchies on it and some blenders in colors that perfectly fit Hugo's personality.

Here's Hugo, at one of our dinner parties.

We do so much for our cats and dogs, it seems only fitting that there should be quilts around them. Let me know if you'd like a scrumbly or smooth quilt for your pet.

🦆

To learn more about these quilts and Diane's other quilting projects, contact her at diane.fitzpatrick@mac.com. And check out her Instagram page.

Comments

Back at It!

It's not that I haven't been making quilts. While 2023 was a slower year for me, quilt-wise, I did manage to churn out four major quilts and some smaller projects. It was a busy year: Two international trips and some domestic travel, my son's wedding, summers at the lake, and a new job for me. But my sewing room kept up a persistent -- and loud -- siren song. I attended QuiltCon last year and took classes to make two quilts: a selvedge quilt and a very modern quilt with solids, both paper-pieced and both by Amy Friend . They were ambitious projects and it took me almost a year to finish them. (More to come on the pitfalls I suffered with that modern Gulls quilt god help me why do I do this to myself I'm an idiot.) So while last year wasn't as productive as my first three years of quilting, the quilts I did make were major. The bed-sized quilt I made for my son and his wife was a modern but scrappy double wedding ring quilt in which I incorporated pieces of lace fro

An Overlapping Color Bar Quilt

This sweet little quilt was given to Our Baby Girl last weekend, so I feel like it's a good time to show it off! I had wanted to make a quilt with the look of transparent overlapping color blocks and while there were kits out there, I wanted to figure it out on my own. Using the Kona Solids color chart panel given to me by my sister Pam, I chose pastel solids that I thought would work. For the most part, they did. Some of the blocks I'd like to re-do, but don't we always think we can do better next time? My quilt model didn't much appreciate doing an outdoor shot. Notice the snow on the ground? That lime green overlap color is one of my favorites. I love purples for babies! Quilting, by Longarmed and Dangerous , is variegated pastel thread in these darling twinkles! For backing, I chose Tula Pink's True Colors Fairy Dust , with all of those magical colors perfect for a baby quilt. When opened up and in the light, the quilting really stands out. Abby, my supervis

Dot and Dash Quilt in Candlelight Colors

There's something therapeutic about making a modern quilt. When you are piecing simple shapes in a simple design, your focus shifts to color and detail. And for me, a white background is less forgiving - and I pay closer attention to my work and try to make fewer mistakes. This was my first quilt from designer Nicole Daksiewicz of Modern Handcraft . All of her quilt designs are very modern, stunning patterns. Check out her variations of this Dot and Dash quilt in bright colors in a rainbow design, in pinks, and in soft pastels - gorgeous! For this quilt, a gift to a BFF, I chose Ruby Star's Candlelight line of fabrics. augmented with blue and taupe solids that I agonized over, because they just didn't seem to match. I even emailed Nicole and asked her advice. (How these designers put up with me, I'll never know.) In the end, the solids I chose worked well. The quilting gods are so kind to me! I loved making this quilt so much that I am ready to make it again, this ti

Search This Blog