Baby Quilt Pronto! And an "addition"!

Our new "addition", Mr. Shorty.

We named this kitty Shorty because he has a short tail and always hung around our house. (His family named him Fred, but he'll always be Shorty to us.) He was a super friendly neighborhood cat, but for the longest time we didn't know where he lived. One summer while we were walking the neighborhood, we figured out who his owners were. 

Both last winter and this winter have been horribly cold, and the owners would let him go outside. He would come to our house, a few houses away, to get warm. One time we brought him home, and the owners said he hadn't been staying home much and they were thinking of bringing him to the shelter. (What???  You guys are letting him out in zero temps!)  DH decided right then and there we would adopt him, and they were OK with it. He is a very nice cat, and gets along fine with the other cats (but Miss Rose gets bent out of shape about it once in awhile). He's about 13 or 14 years old.

Baby quilt packets getting prepared for the stitchers at work.

Next is our baby quilt project.  We have a pregnant co-worker who did not want to know the baby's sex, so that left us quilty ladies in a quandary. What color to make the baby quilt?  Fortunately Deb and I saw a kit and cute pattern from Renee Nanneman that was just perfect for either a boy or a girl. And on sale, too! 

Baby quilt top put together in a weekend. We were given 1 week's notice of the shower.

Mom got to see the quilt top last week (not done) at her surprise shower and "loved" the colors.  My task this week is to finish the quilting, bind it and attach a label. Baby is due March 4, but mom looks like she's going to pop her buttons! Literally!

A little quilting done. Still have the square-in-square blocks to quilt.

Yellow and Gray baby quilt top done

Rosie gives a final CAT scan before I sewed the blocks together.

Finished top with some sunshine effects. It's always a challenge to get group blocks to fit together nicely. I gave myself some wiggle room by cutting the squares and strips for everyone, and making the strips slightly wider than needed so the blocks could be trimmed to the same size.

Here's the back (with more sunshine effects).

And in keeping with the yellow theme, here are my lovely Trout lilies. These are freebies that showed up in my yard one year, (they love the cedar chips) and they keep coming back every spring. They are only around for a couple of weeks, then they go underground until next year. I just love 'em.