Nosey Parker Looks Good in Lime Green......

When I signed up to do a bitty swap titled "one color plus white" and got lime green as my assigned color, I was flummoxed!  What's lime green and white?  I was drawing a mental blank.  Then NP walked by and I thought, Nosey Parker in the grass is green and white! 

I woke her up to get this photo, she isn't too thrilled with me here.  :)

My usual process to get ideas and patterns is to use Google.  I Google the subject, like in this case, "cat coloring page" because I like fun patterns that translate well to fabric.  Clicked on "images" to see hundreds of cats.  After deciding that I wanted to piece a cat rather than applique it, I changed that search to "cat quilt block", where I found a photo of a free-pieced folk art cat.  So I sat down with paper and pencil and drafted out a pattern so I could paper-piece my block, knowing that if I tried to free-piece it, they would just get bigger and bigger as I went along and that won't work when you have only 3.5" to work with.  3", really, because you can't use the outer 1/4" all the way around, that's left for seam allowance. 

After a few trials and errors, I ended up with these- after finalizing the pattern I printed out half of them using the mirror image option and offered my swap partners a choice.  Most of them didn't care which one they got, so they're all packed up and ready to go, along with the ship in a bottle blocks.

Oh, I gave them little green eyes, too.  I had added pink noses, but tore them back out, they looked stupid.  And my friend Jennifer likes them better without eyes, says it's like NP is walking away from her, which is more like the actual, busy NP, as far as Jen is concerned.  LOL  The eyes can be removed with a snip if the recipient wants to take them off.

Now I'm getting ready to start my partner's mug rug, the bird in the teacup.  I pulled fabrics yesterday and if I still like them this morning, I'll get going on it.  I just love having a project!