Such a helper I had in the sewing room last night.  Helper or hindrance?  Hard to tell the difference?  He wants to be a helper, but he mostly gets in the way.  But I let him.  ‘Cause he’s just too cute to shoo away.  But a picture is always worth a thousand words……

“Hi Mom!  Oh, were you using the cutting table?  I won’t be in the way.  I’ll just stay over here on the side.”  By the way, have I told you that Boo weighs about 16 pounds?  He’s a very big cat.  He takes up quite a bit of room on the cutting table.

“I’ll just be waaaaaay over here.  Holding down this batting for ya.”

“Oh, man, this stuff is soft.  Maybe I’ll just take a little nap.”  Well, that was just fine until he started to eat the batting.  I missed that for the pictures because I was too busy pulling it out of his teeth.  Maybe we better move the batting…..

“I can help, Mom.  Here.  Let me just smooooooth out the fabric for ya so’s you can cut it.”

“Or maybe it’s just more fun to crumple it all up!  OOOO, there’s a little string right there.  I got it!”

And then the lightning fast paw comes out to grab the next piece……

“Aw, shucks, Mom.  I was just trying to help.”

“Right there.  Didn’t you say 8 inches?  Line the ruler up right there, Mom.”

“Oh, just give me the rotary cutter.  I can do it!”

“On second thought, I think I’ll just lay on top of the mat and the ruler.  These things need to be held down and it’s about time for another nap.”  It’s a wonder I got anything at all done. 

But I did get a little bit done!  Remember this quilt that I made for a class sample recently?

The class for this one is on Tuesday of this week.  So I needed to prepare some things to help with class.  To show the steps involved in making this quilt and all.  Remember also how reversible this quilt is?  And that you get two quilts for the price of one?  (You can go back to the posting entitled “Boo Reporting” on May 17 to see the back side of this quilt and the one entitled “Progress” on May 16 shows a lot of the detail of the making of the quilt.)  I told you then that I thought a good application for this technique might be placemats.  Fall on one side to use for Thanksgiving and then flip them over and have Christmas on the other side.  The minute you’re done with Thanksgiving dinner do the flip thing and voila!  Instant Christmas decorations.  (That idea really came from my friend Linda.  I think she made placemats that did that exact thing one year.)

So I decided to make some placemats to show the steps.

Here are the big center pieces of the placemats as they are quilted with parallel lines of stitching.

And here they are in progress!  To show the steps to the class.  Good thing I didn’t need to actually finish these for something this week.  With all the extra help I was getting from Boo, that would have been impossible.  They will get another round of scrappy Christmas fabric before they are finished and bound.

And here’s the Thanksgiving back side!  Or maybe this is the front?  Can’t decide which side I like better.  There will be four of these when they are all finished.  But I need to show all the steps to the class on Tuesday.  Various levels of completion is a good thing when you have a helper like Boo. 

Who now, I might add, has decided to sleep in the chair.  After all, it’s no fun to sleep on the cutting mat and ruler when Mom doesn’t need them any more.  With all the help around here, it’s a good thing I have a few months until Thanksgiving and Christmas.

‘Night, Boo!
Mom