A Quilt Grows in Oregon

The power came back just before 11:00 a.m. yesterday morning. Some folks in the valley are still without power, and so we're feeling pretty lucky. We were barely inconvenienced once my blog post was published. After Mike left for work, I went back to sleep for a while, and then got to work with some hand-stitching. Of course, we were without heat, and so the kitties took to their lap-warming responsibilities with gusto.

Ordinarily, Smitty (who was there first) would have chased Sadie off. These were desperate times, however, and so he was surprisingly tolerant of her interlapping. (Ha! Did you see what I did there?)

Early in the storm, we lost another branch of our big tree out front. It's the second huge branch that's come crashing down this winter. The first time, it took out the dwarf Japanese maple that was growing below.

This branch has taken such a big portion of the trunk with it that I'm afraid the tree might be doomed. It's sad because we've spent quite a bit of money trying to keep this tree alive. You might recall that it was treated (expensively) for tip blight over the past couple of years. It was planted by the previous owner, and it has the prettiest star-shaped clusters of needles on its branches. We'll see, but Mike and I discussed taking it out yesterday. We'll plant something else in its place, but it still hurts the heart to take out a big tree.

Also, I needed to publish hurriedly yesterday, and so I completely forgot to tell you about every blooming thing Matthew and I saw as we walked to our cars after breakfast Thursday morning. We were walking in an old neighborhood off Portland's Hawthorne Boulevard. One house had a rock retaining wall and there were lots of flowers blooming between the rocks. I was envious of their tulips.

Obviously, these traffic-heavy Portland neighborhoods are not troubled with pesky deer eating their tulips.

Apparently their squirrels know better than to eat the bulbs too.

Not sure what this is...lobelia, maybe?

No flowers here, but I liked the way the rain drops had collected on the leaves.

So when the power came back on yesterday, I was ready to get back to the Quiltmaker's Garden. This section was left laid out on the ironing board yesterday, and so I sewed it together.

That completed the strip of three sections for that portion of the quilt.

With that finished, I back-tracked and did the strip to its left.

Then, I moved to the right and completed the strip with the watering can.

All the two-patches are a little tedious to sew over and over and over again, but I'm still having fun sewing this quilt together. It's like the best jigsaw puzzle ever. Finally, I added the right-most section in the image below.

By then, I was getting tired of sewing two-patches together. Here it is all laid out. It's a little more than halfway finished now.

The kitties were apparently tired of rearranging the sections, only to see their work undone once again by the mad quilter of the house..."mad" taking on several different meanings there. By bedtime, they'd rearranged it once again.

Recall the assembly diagram:

I've worked my way from left to right through the middle section. There are still lots of two-patches to be sewn together before I've made it all the way to the right. Next, I'm going to move to the lower sections where the gray "pavers" and pink roses are. I'll do those next before returning to the two-patches. The first section is laid out on the ironing board, waiting for me.

This morning, I'll do some more hand-stitching, but then I'll get back to work on the quilt. I doubt I'll finish it today, but a finish by the end of the weekend seems completely within reach.