The Cat's Cradle

Hello, friends.  I just finished this fun little quilt that I'd like to share with you.  This was an experimental project using a Christmas present that I received, the Cat's Cradle Tool from Creative Grids.  I asked for this tool/template because I'm currently working on a mystery quilt that requires it.  Though I'm trying to be diligent about finishing already-started quilt projects, I just had to see how this new tool works!

The good news is I didn't buy any new fabric for this quilt!  Last year I had purchased one of those scrap collections from Moda (Basic Mixologie) down at The Little Foot Quilt Shoppe, and I decided to see what I could make with that.  This was the first time I bought one of those fabric packs, and I didn't know what to expect really.  You can see the strips in the pic above.  Most of them look about 3" wide, but they do contain selvage edges, so by the time they are trimmed to actual usable fabric, some weren't even 2" wide.  I probably wouldn't buy this product again, but, hey, I gave it a try for around $10.

I was inspired to make that quilt block that was part of a daily quilt calendar.  Can you see the cat's cradle unit in there?  It is made up of 12 cat's cradle units and 4 squares for the corners.  I haven't really thought much about this quilt unit before, but it's really quite common in many traditional blocks.  That star is a 10" finished block.

My mom is currently working on a sampler quilt that inspired the blocks below.  It is a much quicker one to make.  I made the biggest units that I could with the size of the fabric strips that I had, and these are 5" finished blocks.

In deciding how to put them all together, I added some strips with cornerstones around the green blocks and sashing with cornerstones to bring everything together.  I love it when quilt designs flow like this and it's hard to tell where one block stops and the next one starts.

I even had this backing fabric with the green dots on hand that I decided against using in a quilt a few years ago, and just the right amount!  Confession:  I did have to buy the binding fabric.  There just weren't enough 2-1/4" wide pieces in the scrap collection to make a scrappy binding.  I ordered 1/4 yard of matching fabric from another Etsy seller, and it was in my mailbox in just a few days.

There are SO MANY POSSIBILITIES with the cat's cradle tool!  It makes various sizes which is great.  When you use it, everything is trimmed down to the perfect size, so the units fit together just right, and getting nice points on the triangles and squares is pretty easy.

This quilt is 33" square and will soon be hanging in my house somewhere.  Wouldn't this look great as a big quilt with more blocks, bigger blocks?  How about setting the whole thing on point like below?

It's a very wintery weekend here, perfect for sewing a lot, which is what I plan to do.  Thanks for visiting and reading, and I hope you were inspired to sew!  I'm linking up at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday.  See you soon!