I listen to the radio when I’m sewing.

I don’t listen to music though. I prefer the gentle burble of voices as an accompaniment to stitching, whether it be a play, factual programme or current affairs.

It’s not that I don’t like or listen to music – I do. But I don’t stitch to music and I don’t really like strangers choosing music for me. I prefer to choose for myself, rather than hearing some spod on the radio’s arbitrary (or commercially-motivated) selection of “choons”.

This week I’ve listened to a lot of radio.

I had a parcel of fabrics, including some luxurious velvets, for which my brief was to make some cats similar to this one:Rather than black cats, they were to be gingery velvet cats. “No problem!” I thought. “Ginger velvet is no match for my sewing skills!”

But as it happens, I was wrong. Ginger velvet proved to be, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit of a bugger.

In my original blasé enthusiasm I hadn’t realised how much thicker the ginger stuff was than my original black velvet.

My pattern, designed for a lighter weight fabric, just didn’t work because I couldn’t turn the arms and legs, or get the proportions to look right when I scaled them up.

And then there was the matter of the face…

What works on a black background turns out not to look anywhere near as nice on a ginger one. The features sort of disappeared into the thicker pile of the ginger velvet. Instead of feline, the resulting face looked a bit myopic and weird.

So I tried adding different fabrics as a background. I tried different designs. But ginger ears being a good bit bigger (again due to the thickness of the fabric) things went a bit…well, foxy…

Eventually I managed to crank out a solitary ginger cat-creature.

I hesitate to describe it as a cat. It is a cat hybrid (possibly a Felinae); a not-unpleasant creature, but not what I originally had in mind.

My fingers weren’t happy either, after hand-stitching the limbs – the only way to get them to look right (I’m not good with thimbles. Trying to push a needle repeatedly through thick furnishing velvet means I now wish I were.)

Eventually I admitted defeat – and reverted to black velvet.

And after some solid radio-listening (no music involved) I had a clutter of bohemian gypsy cats to show for it.

There’s nothing quite like the joy that follows the completion of a commission. Especially when it’s a tricky one.

Let’s just say that if I had to sum it up in a song title, I would now be whistling Bohemian Rhapsody.

Or should that be – Bohemian Cats-ody? ♥