Branching Out

Good morning, my friends. We're approaching what passes for normal here. The laundry was finished yesterday, and I weeded my weedy herb garden. While I was out, I realized it's time to cut the peonies back for the season. That'll be on today's agenda. Also, I think I've managed to grab all the strays from the camper that I neglected to unpack in my first effort. No matter how hard I try, no matter how many cupboards, drawers, and cabinets I open, I still manage to leave behind a few things. 

So that left me plenty of time for an afternoon of sewing. Before we left on our trip, I was working my way through my list of WIPs. Yesterday's effort was to make the final two blocks for the Northern Wilderness project. First up...this "Trees" block. This is the picture from the book.

Sadie was there to help with the piecing.

This block is a new one to me. It’s called "Evergreen Tree" or else "Pine Tree," depending on which resource you're looking at. It was a little tricky. First, I needed to make the bottom "trunk" section. And, drat. I didn't get it centered just right.  That's going to go into the "Oh well" category.

From there, I added the upper parts of the trees. Getting all those HST's pointing in the right direction was a little challenging, but we got 'er done.

From there, I needed corners to make it square.

And then it just needed the background pieces, and it was ready for applique.

Smitty is better at applique than Sadie, and so he took over from there.

It took all afternoon, but by day's end, it was ready for top-stitching.

I'll set that aside for now to make the second block. The final block will be the Orca. Here's the picture from the book.

Annoyingly, the quilt block is paper-pieced, and you know I hate paper-piecing. For this one block, I can probably set aside my disdain for the technique in the service of finishing all the blocks I need for the quilt. I'm hoping I can finish it up today.

Okay, and when I started on my sewing, I completely forgot to start quilting the Cats in Pajamas.

I'll get started on that this morning. There's one housekeeping chore on my list in addition to cutting back the peonies. There should still be plenty of time for sewing today.

Probably I won't post tomorrow because I have an early dental appointment. Let's plan to chat again on Wednesday. Have a good day, Everyone!