cat house is finished!

Okay, readers, PLEASE, the next time I post a photo of some store-bought pattern - Butterick, Simplicity, McCall's packets full of folded tissue paper and directions in 17 languages - that I'm all excited about, remind me that I HATE making things from patterns, okay?  I was cursing this dratted thing all last night.  But it is finished.

There is a thing on the bottom side that still makes no sense to me.  You can kind of see it in the front there.  Instead of the bottom just being a plain circle sewn onto the tops, it has a little rectangle cut out of it and then there is a second piece of fleece which reinforces the rectangle - but is otherwise not attached to the bottom.  I'm assuming it's a thumbhole for popping the cushion out of the bottom, but I really don't know.  If I had it to do over I would have cut the bottom without this hole and not cut that second piece at all.  I probably put it in backwards because I couldn't rightly determine from the drawing in the instructions which it thought was the right side and which the wrong side and what was supposed to be "together" when sewing on the bottom.  And of course, my thread on Baron von Quilthausen broke like 67,925 times while working on this project.  And the foam didn't like going into the flannel sleeves and still isn't really shoved up in there too well.  And closing the opening around the wire I inserted to keep its shape wasn't a piece of cake either.  I nearly gave up after that step but decided to push through and finish the project last night, and I'm glad it's done.

Sigh.  And this is probably one of those "sew simple!" patterns they like to push on people!  The whole time I was working on it, I imagined the recipient saying, "oh, I love it!  Now I need one for my OTHER cat!" to which I would reply, "I will happily give you the pattern and you can make it yourself!"

Tonight I will reward myself by returning to my quilting in some way.  Kaleidoscope needs mostly hand work, so does preparing applique, and I have to cut more fabric before I can do anything on Dark Star.  I really, really want to use that "Ready Set Snow!" jelly roll to make the Lone Starburst quilt in Kimberly Einmo's book, and I have so many charm packs itching to be tossed together into something pretty, but I think I will do some cutting for a few hours and then hand sew on Kaleidoscope so I can get those two quilts out the door soon.  But first I'm going to work out before I head home.