Cozy Kitty

I made this rice bag cat for an amazing lady at work who just had back surgery. I wanted to give her something she could use, not just a trashy magazine...though I do love a trashy magazine every now and then!

Anyways, I saw the pattern for this cat to use up old scraps of fabric (quilter's scrap cat). I thought, wow, a cat would make a fun microwavable rice bag!  And so I set off to make this beaut on my day off.






                                                              
First, choose your fabric. Like all things, I chose based on how cute they looked together, and how cheap they were to buy as remnants at Hobby Lobby. This particular choice was Duck cotton, which I have no real opinion about since I am not a real sewer, I only pretend to be... One thing I can say about it is that it unravels at the seams easily, so use generous seam allowances.


Cut your squares, or rectangles in this case. I just randomly chose the size I wanted based on the size of paper I cut out. I know, precision is important to me, too.

Okay. Sew the columns together. You can do rows instead if you like that better. I don't mind how you accomplish this step. Be careful though to keep same seam allowances.
You can see that I lost the yellow stripe on
the center pieces, but I lost them on both, so that is okay.



Next, sew together the columns, or rows, however you chose to combine them. I tried to line them up so that I had sharp lines across...the key word there is tried. I was mostly successful, but that nasty precision thing came back into play.






I cut out the shape of the cat first, then laid it over the other patchwork piece. You could probably cut both at once, but I wanted to line up seams. This was easier for me to do with the cut out.

Then sew right sides together. I wish I had made the ears wider than the pattern showed since I lost a lot in the seam allowance. Be sure to leave a hole so you can fill with rice.

Turn right sides out, then fill with rice. I wanted the finished product to have an aromatherapy quality as well, so I put a "few" drops of lavender oil on the rice as well as a few sprays of pillow mist (because I got carried away). I also baked the rice for about 7 minutes on 350 to set the scent. I just made that part up, but I think it worked. I wanted the head to hold rice and not just sag and flop, so I filled it, then did a quick stitch across the neckline.
                           








I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. My friend was really pleased too, which made it worth any effort!