I’ve got to say, it’s nice when you can sew something for your “tween” son and feel like supermom. It doesn’t happen all that often. My son will be turning 11 next month (yikes!) and loves cats. When I told him that Lizzy House had a line of cat fabric coming out he begged me for a pillow. Now, some of the fabrics in the Catnap line are a little more on the feminine side so I had some strict rules. I could only use the fabrics you see in the pillow above! And I needed to fussy cut the cat floating from balloons and make it the centerpiece of the pillow.  I received a FQ bundle of this colorway courtesy of Andover Fabrics last week and spent a few days mulling over the design.

I decided to work on something similar to an X and+ block.  So I drafted a design with a plus in the center so that I could fussy cut the cute cat floating from the balloon. I used the dimensions needed to fussy cut him nicely to figure out the rest of my patchwork piecing. I bordered my plus with little rows of mice, again based on their dimensions because I wanted to fit in their whole height.  They are too cute!  I made sure that they all faced right side up too because my son would notice that for sure.  I used the cat faces to finish out the plus. I deviated from the X and + block on the corners and made quarter square triangles using two more prints from the collection.

I decided to quilt the top heavily, just for kicks, with lines spaced every 1/2″ in both directions in a diagonal grid.  As it turns out, my son actually noticed that detail and thought that the quilting was “cool.”

I finished it off with an invisible zipper from Zipit.

I am happy to report that the pillow was very well received. He loves it! Phew! Now I can use my scraps to make a fussy cut mosaic block for my growing collection (my ulterior motive for making his pillow so promptly!). I also can’t wait to sew with some of the other colors in this collection, like the coral, without any restrictions from my son!