The Cat in the Hat (a quilt) Dr Seuss aniversary.

The third appliqué quilt that I made for a baby was started in anticipation of my niece/nephew to be. By the time I was getting to the end of the project,that I would have a nephew, and his name, had both been confirmed.

My brother and his partner were both fond of being a little bit different.  Each has a passion for cats and I recalled that a childhood delight in the works of Dr Seuss has stayed into adulthood (well him getting older at least) with my brother.

So I looked at various images and settled on one from The Cat in the Hat.

Ran the idea past the parents to be and they thought it "exactly right and just what people would expect of us".

I traced out a line drawing onto acetate, popped it onto an overhead projector and drew around the enlarged outline on paper pinned to the wall.

Cat in the Hat quilt

The body of the Cat in the Hat is white cotton, the white and red on his hat, gloves and bow tie is satin (slippery fraying stuff that is, still it looked right), the hardest material to find was the orange for the gold fish.

You may recall from previous posts my method of appliqué, is to satin stitch in embroidery floss all of the edges. In this case to stay true to the design that had to be in black.

All in BLACK, that was a lot of black, I got a little bored with black however, it was worth it. I hope you agree. There is a little wadding in The Cat in the Hat and his juggled items.

The name of my nephew went on to the book balanced on the Cat's finger.

I kept the quilting simple and followed the soft lines on the blue checked material. Still happy with the result, although I wish I had a better picture of it.

I will admit that this is not my favourite Dr Seuss story, indeed it does not even make it into the top three.  I like the story Green Eggs and Ham (although never having had them I do not know if I would like to eat them, Sam I Am), If I ran the Circus with the ever versatile Mr Sneelock, and yes predictably How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Shortly after I started drafting this post came the amazing news that previously unknown, unpublished Dr Seuss books have been found and "What pet should I Get" will be published  this summer, that's exciting.

Today being the 111th  anniversary of Theodor Geisel (Dr Seuss) birth in 1904 felt like a good day to post the quilt based on his wonderfully zany illustration and an acknowledgement of the lasting delight of his stories.