Pets on Quilts

I have to sneak this one in under the wire.  Darlene, at Sew Cal Gal is hosting a Pets On Quilts contest.  You can go via the button on my side bar and see all the fabulous entries.  For mine, I want to present to you Lincoln's Memorial with my beautiful model, Miss Halloween (AKA Hallie).

Hallie is sitting on a quilt covered with cats.  Here is a photo of the quilt without the cat so you can see it.

There are 54 cats (55 actually) and one dog. The one extra cat and the dog are in the border. Here is the story behind the quilt.

One day in the late afternoon, I heard screaming. I asked DH to go and see who's kids were making so much noise. He went outside and came right back inside to tell me to call 911 as our neighbor's house was on fire. She kept screaming, "my babies". Since we did not know her everyone thought she meant children. Turns out it was her cats. One brave cat jumped from the second story window and survived. She is the one in the border. The other 54 were not so lucky. It was so tragic. Her little doggie didn't make it either, so he is memoralized in the quilt too.
You can see Samantha, the brown tabby and the doggie too.

The woman was just devistated by her loss. Mostly of her beloved cats. We helped her and it seemed like we just kept finding more and more cats. My DH and DS worked a long time helping her find them. My Dh burried each one in the woods behind our home.

Being such a cat lover myself, I could not imagine how she felt and what I could do to ease her pain, so of course I decided to make a quilt. I wanted each cat square to represent one of the 54 that died in the fire. No two cats are alike on the quilt. I named it Lincoln's Memorial and here is the label.

The woman was so distraught by her loss and she felt so guilty (even though it was an electrical fire started inside the wall) she couldn't take the quilt from me. So we have it and we use it every day. No one of us will ever forget that day.

I know my story is kind of sad but the quilt is beautiful. I think I have a picture of each one of my cats sleeping on that quilt too.