Starting and Finishing

Good morning, my friends. The promised rain has finally arrived. We're expecting rain for a good part of the week. It's just in time for my one-hour drive (both ways) to a quilt shop tomorrow. Too bad I couldn't have done it on a nicer day. Oh well. The fabric I'll see there will brighten my day.

But let's talk about yesterday, shall we? When I left you, I was heading for my slow-stitching. I was hoping I could finish it up yesterday. After stitching for an hour, I had to call it quits. Now it's this far along:

No doubt I can finish it up this morning. I've moved my hoop to capture the leaf on the right side. After that, all that's left is the outer border. No sweat.

And the pumpkin had me thinking it was time to put out my pumpkin runners and wall-hanging. So I switched to the Cornflowers table topper for our kitchen peninsula. I purchased this pattern long ago when I visited a quilt shop in San Diego. I wasn't able to find it online. The designer was Sticks and Broomstraws, and I can't find a website for that either.

On the table, this "Pumpkin Patch" topper. This was designed by Julie Weaver, and featured in the September, 2016, issue of Quilter's World magazine.

Finally, I used that same pumpkin pattern to finish off this "Pumpkin Pie" wall-hanging. The embroidered panel was from a class I took with Meg Hawkey of Crabapple Hill Studios. The pattern was free in the class. For a while it was included it on her website as a dish towel, but her website has been taken down with her retirement. Not to worry...I found the pattern right here.

I might finish off the current piece using this same design somehow. I'm not really sure. Something will come to me.

So, I had some housekeeping chores to do. The birdfeeders needed filling, and there were a few other things to keep me busy. Possibly I was dragging my feet getting to the start of quilting the Barnyard quilt. It waited patiently for me to get my mind right.

Around mid-afternoon, I decided to choose some threads. On top, I'll use this off-white.

It's a YLI 40-weight thread. (These notes about the thread are mainly for my own reference.)

There was a full bobbin of this next one, and that seemed like an obvious choice for the back. It appears darker than it is in this image. It's a lighter tan color.

This is an Essential 50 weight thread.

So I threaded the machine, and then I flipped the excess backing over the batting and checked my tension. It looks good on top.

And hey...the bottom looks good too. Well. That worked wonders for my level of hesitancy.

There are 12 blocks in this quilt. I'll quilt it one row at a time, and then do the borders and sashings separately. I started with the middle block in the second row. Using this little ruler and my hera marker, I put a dot one-half inch from the center point in all four triangles.

Then I did some dot-to-dot stitching, Angela Walters style. By starting in the middle, I could do this whole section without cutting thread.

Here's how it looks from the back.

That was enough for a start. I left it needle down. I'm still puzzling over how to complete the rest of the block. Each barn has a traditional quilt block, but the "door" and roof are the same throughout. I haven't yet decided what to do in the rest of the block, but I'll figure it out today. 

I had no kitty help yesterday. I found Smitty snoozed out on this quilt. He likes it when we fold this flannel quilt over and over to make a cushy bed for him.

Sadie was in her studio apartment on the catio. She likes it here. She's the only one small enough to fit inside, and so this is her exclusive domain.

Okay, and since our fair city is being invaded by federal troops, I feel a need to speak up about what's happening. To the few of you who don't like these comments about current events, I'm letting you know what's ahead whenever I post the soapbox image below. If you don't like that part, I encourage you to stop reading now. If you read on, any offense you take from it will be on you. Consider yourself warned. And if you're interested in that part, let's just have a chat about what's going on in Portland.

So, I'm beyond angry about this. Despite what you might read on social media, Portland is a beautiful, calm, peaceful, and yes, weird city. We're proud of our weirdness. Heck, comedians have done whole multi-season shows featuring our unique vibe. To call us "war-ravaged" is ridiculous.

Some of the memes generated from this have been downright hilarious. And, while I could easily get off into a long-winded rant, let's just take a look at some of the more humorous ones I've seen. This is at the Portland farmer's market, which is held in the Park Blocks that run through my alma mater, Portland State University.

Or how about this one. I'm not a knitter, but I can crochet if I need to arm myself with yarn.

Portland has a vibrant music scene. Beware, feds. You could be next.

For anyone arriving by air, be on the lookout for these fearsome characters.

On a more serious note, I want to let you know that if your news source is showing you scary video of things on fire and people yelling and shouting, you should know that those images are from some real protesting that happened the last time Trump send his goons to Portland during the pandemic in 2020. Even then, the protests were happening in the tiny area you see in the image below.

Any large city is going to have its share of problems. Portland is no different. Sadly, we have a large population of unsheltered folks, just like any other large city. As a group, those folks are not violent, and statistically, they're more likely to be the victims of crime rather than the perpetrators. According to 2024 data from the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), Portland's crime rate ranks 72nd among large cities in the United States.

Troops were not welcome nor needed in 2020, and they are not welcome nor needed now. To any National Guard troops being deployed to Portland, we know you don't want to be here. It pains me that you're being used as political pawns. My message to Trump is this: We don't need you. We don't want you. GTF out of our fair city!

Thank you for your attention to this matter.