The cat has ears, a head, a body and a tail, and there is not one curved seam in it. Joanna, of the Cozy Sewing Nook channel, builds the whole animal out of small squares laid on corners and stitched across the diagonal, which leaves the block as nothing but straight lines and a quarter inch seam allowance.
Her working rule on that channel is that a project should need a basic sewing machine, or a needle and thread, and nothing else. This cat block is built to it. Two rectangles at 4 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches become the head and the body. Four plain 1 1/2 inch squares turn four of their corners into the shape of a face. A 4 1/2 by 1 1/2 inch strip with two printed squares stitched onto it becomes the ears, and the tail is pieced from what is left.
The details worth having in writing are the ones the video passes over quickly. She draws the diagonal on the small square and then sews a hair to the inside of that drawn line rather than on top of it, so the fabric has room to fold back and still cover the corner. She presses the head seam and the body seam in opposite directions on purpose, so the two ridges butt up against each other when the pieces meet. And the finished block is not square. It measures 6 1/2 by 7 1/2 inches, and a strip 7 1/2 inches long by 1 1/2 inches wide added down one side brings it to 7 1/2 inches each way.
There is also a warning that most block tutorials leave out. If your print runs in one direction, the four plain squares belong on the inside corners and not the outside ones, or the cat ends up with its fabric lying the wrong way. That is usually something you find out with a seam ripper in your hand.
The video is the block on its own. If you have not pieced a block before, or you want to know what happens to it after this, our complete step by step guide to making a quilt carries it from the first cut through to the binding.
The channel is Cozy Sewing Nook, where Joanna posts sewing and quilting tutorials for beginners.
