My Three Cats

From These...To these...

To these...

There is NO photo transfer involved in my method. I had the photos on the computer, adjusted the contrast, made the 2 black cats into line drawings & the orange one into a b&w. Then I enlarged & printed each in The Big Picture. You can figure out the size of each finished cat by counting the inches on the green cutting mat they were photographed on.

I took the printed photos and drew the outlines for the different colors, then went over my lines with a black marker. Each piece was then traced onto the proper color of fabric using a light box, and liqui-fuse was applied on the edges of each fabric piece with a fine point squeeze bottle. The black is the background for 2 cats, lightest orange for the other. After the liqui-fuse dried, I ironed it between layers of a teflon sheet and cut each piece out, then laid it on the cat background fabric, using the light box to position it. I held it down with a pin long enough to move to the ironing board and fuse.

The large black cat was the easiest; the orange cat had many tiny irregular fabric pieces. Black cat's eye and the white on sleeping cat are reverse applique'. Pupils are drawn on with a black Micron pen. After attaching a tear away stabilizer to the back, I sewed straight stitches back and forth over all the fabric pieces to make the fur. This was especially effective on orange cat, and blended the colored sections together. I was careful to look at which way real cat fur lies, which was a bit easier due to living with the models.

Steamed flat, and soon to be on a quilt, but you'll have to wait and see!