Raining sunshine

Gosh, the responses to that last post have been WONDERFUL!  I now have sixteen blocks on my design wall, waiting to be assembled into a quilt top.  It's my birthday on Tuesday and I think since I have so many blocks already it's the perfect excuse for a whole day of sewing.  Who knows, I may even get it quilted now that I've discovered the joy of spray-basting.  (Did you know?  I did not know.  Spray basting!  It's so quick, and so flat, and so much better for my knees!)

I tried it for the first time on a quilt I've just finished as a commission for a lady called Claire - or rather, for her young daughter.  She'd already bought a beautiful felted mobile of fluffy clouds with falling rainbow raindrops from my very talented friend Peppercorn Crafts, so when she wanted a quilt too, I immediately thought of Dashwood's new Rain or Shine collection designed by Stephanie Thannhauser and raced off to Simply Solids with an excuse to buy it at last.

I think it's worked, don't you?  Nice and simple, to show off those lovely jolly prints.  I mixed in some new mini pearl bracelets and some of my very precious hoarded Aneela Hooey cats from her Hello Petal collection, since I noticed some of the clouds in the Rain or Shine fabrics had text that said "raining cats and dogs" and I knew Claire liked kittens.  What kind of person doesn't like kittens, after all?

I bound it in some navy stripes to keep it from getting too sugary, and may I say I'm getting quite good at this machine binding malarky.  Look at that corner, eh?  A lot better than they used to be!

I found 2 yards of a pretty blue blender called "Stonehenge" at good old Abakhans and decided it looked a bit like a slightly cloudy blue sky, which worked with the theme.  Then I got carried away and added a few squares to the front too, so that I almost didn't leave enough to cover the back...

I love the smiley sunshine and the little rainbows of Rain or Shine, but honestly my favourite fabric in this one is still those little white cats.  This square is my favourite - I always thought "Tiddles" was the traditional cat name, but "Tibbles" is much better.  It makes me think of Tybalt, the King of Cats from Romeo and Juliet.

By the way, I'm calling this quilt "Raining Sunshine" after the theme song of a rather wonderful film called Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs.  If you haven't seen it, you should.  Trainboy was OBSESSED with that song for months, and remarkably enough I can still stand to listen to it.  Occasionally.