How Does She Do It?

Today I took pictures as I made a cat. I thought you might be interested in how they evolve.
I start with a picture, this time from the internet. I don't worry about copyrigt because the final product will bear almost no resemblance to the original. I draw squares and triangles on the picture so I can see how I need to cut the fabric. I love the tilt on the head on this one but that is going to be a challenge to do.

I start with the head, in this case a 2.5 inch square and add white to the corners to make the faces more triangular. The white will be part of the white bib. I decided that I would do free-standing ears so I drew them on the back of a doubled scrap, sewed around the shape, cut them and turned them. Now I will place them on the corners and sew green background scraps over them so the head will look more rounded at the top.

Oh, oh. I have a problem. I didn't leave a wide enough space on the left side to be able to sew the background fabric there. What to do? Most people would take the ear off and re-do it but I thought I would try just folding the ear back a bit. It turned out so great that I undid the other ear and folded it too. Mistakes often turn out to be the best part.

Now I have cut the white bib at an angle and added the front legs. The bib part had to be cut at an angle so the head would be tipped as in the picture. For the leg I took a rectangle of brown and added triangles of green on each side. It took a couple of tries to get the right look. Looking back, I wish I had made brown angles on the white bib so it wouldn't be so square. It's one of those things that you notice when it's all done and think that next time you'll do it diffenently. It would require ripping back to nearly the beginning to change it now.

Now the back of the cat is on. It was a rectangle with a green triangle on the front and then I also added one on the top back to make it look rounder.

Now I thought it needed back legs and front feet. I made a strip with brown and green to sew on the bottom. It took about 6 tries before I got it right. Sometimes what looks the easiest is actually the hardest to do. You will notice in the last picture that I did some work on the front foot so it doesn't look quite so angular.

Last, I made a tail and attached it when I put on the green border all around. I haven't decided whether in the end the tail will go forward around the feet or to the back as in the picture. Both look all right. I guess it will depend on what is in the square behind it. I make the final border quite wide so I have lots of leeway for squaring the whole piece.
When I see this cat online, the square white bib is really bugging me so I may take it apart and at least put a brown triangle on the left side. That would only require undoing one seam. Of course, if I go back that far I might as well do both sides. Stay tuned.