Two Small Quilts

Good morning, my friends. It was another rainy day yesterday. There was a meme on Facebook from a Portland weatherman that said, "Hello darkness my old friend." It made me laugh. Yep...that's the Pacific Northwest for you. We're told we have at least another ten days of gray skies and rain off and on. Hopefully, summer will return, and we'll have good weather for our trip, but we should all pack our rain gear just in case.

As for yesterday's sewing, Sadie was my sewing helper. Together, we got a lot done.

The first thing I did was to sew a border on the Santa Quartet.

And then I gave it its final border. It ends up at 16 x 28 inches.

I’ll use this fabric on the back. It’s been in my stash of Christmas fabrics for a long time.

And I’ll use that same green from the inner border for the binding. I’m going to put this aside for now, but I’ll endeavor to get it finished so that I can use it this Christmas.

Okay, and then I turned my attention to the “Bunny Bait.” This was a free pattern from the Sewing Loft. I needed to sandwich it.  

And then I did some straight line quilting in the stripes of the carrots.

Here’s how that looks from the back. It felt like a bold choice to use that green thread. Usually, I’m trying to hide my quilting.

I’d done a Google search for a “line drawing of a carrot.” I found one kind of like this, and so I quilted carrots in the border.

All the way around, alternating the connecting swirl with each one. It just needed some swirls in the green carrot tops, and it was finished.

Here’s how it looks from the back.

There was barely enough time to get the binding sewn on, but sew it on I did.

Today I’ll probably be able to finish the hand stitching. It ends up at 18-1/2 inches square.

So that brings me to my list of WIPs. It’s a grocery shopping day today (drat), but there should still be some time for sewing. First on the list is to make the second row for the Butterfly Garden quilt. This is my adaptation of the Arcade Pattern  from Fabric Cafe. I’m making it one row at a time, and so I’m curious to see how it will look when I add another row. 

If I have any more time for sewing, I want to make another row for the Jawbeakers quilt. These blocks are fun to make, but the cutting takes quite a while.

The last time I talked about this quilt, I confused some folks by calling it “Jawbreakers.” The pattern is Gumballs but since I already made a quilt I’m calling “Gumballs,” 

I gave the green one a different name. Get it? Jawbreakers? Gumballs? How’re you gonna know which is which until you attempt to chew it? 

Okay…so the dreaded grocery shopping trip. It’s a short list today. We’re eating a lot of stuff from the garden right now, and so we don’t need a lot. I need to get out and check the garden too, but it’s been so wet. I’m hoping to get out there today. Things are probably not growing much in this cold wet weather.

So, off I go. Another busy day ahead. What are you doing to keep busy today?

4th Finish in March

Good morning, my friends. Well...we roused the rabble yesterday. I'll tell you about that when I’m sure my balance is steady enough to climb up on my Soapbox. For now, let's talk about that fourth finish. Ta-Da! It ends up at 14-1/2 x 13 inches.

Here's how it looks from the back.

To finish it off, I decided on one fabric for the outer border. It was sewn on quilt-as-you-go style. Then, for a little added support, I stitched a single line around the embroidery.

From there, I just needed a binding. I bought that binding fabric while we were traveling in Virginia many years ago. It's supposed to look like frosty birch trees. I've only ever used it as a binding fabric.

I added a hot fix crystal to the larger star at the bottom...

And another smaller one to the smaller star. (Sorry these images aren't in sharper focus.)

While I was sewing, I baked another loaf of our newly-beloved Irish Brown Bread. We've enjoyed this so much toasted for breakfast, and I'm not yet ready to stop baking it. I suppose we'll get tired of it eventually.

While we were at the protest, I took a boat load of pictures with my phone. When I transferred the phone pictures to my computer, I found a few strays I'd forgotten to show you earlier. On the day I had my blood draw, we saw some pretty blooming things. This is red flowering currant, an Oregon native, that was growing near the clinic.

These daffodils and the blooming tree below them were growing at our local McDonald's.

You might remember we did our grocery shopping that day too. We were looking, looking, looking for a bottle of Marsala. We finally had to ask for help. But since we looked at pretty much every single bottle of wine on the shelves, I had to share this one:

Kinda makes you want to do epic sh*t, doesn't it? Seems like a good reason for a protest, doesn't it?

As for the protest, I have a few things I can probably show you without saying anything rude. Each Saturday in our little town of Newberg, there is a protest where the main highway forks, making the two one way roads that run through the business district. There, you can find this sign.

That's right...our town likes to think of itself as "The Camellia City." And, indeed, there were some pretty blooming camellias there yesterday.

I think this next one is blooming rosemary.

And more pretty daffodils.

Okay, time to get down to the nitty-gritty. Please don't feel compelled to read on. I'm getting out my bullhorn now, and it's probably going to get loud. It would not be considered rude if you want to plug your ears.

We were out for the No Kings protest, and what a great turnout! Keep in mind that our little town is only about 27,000 people, and yet, it is reported that 1,700 turned out. I'm estimating we had at least twice as many as for the previous protest back in October. 

After a couple of hours, I walked away from the larger group to try to get an idea how many were in attendance. It’s hard to tell because of the lay of the land, but you can get an idea of how it looks.

And look at these two ne'er do wells. They look like trouble to me. Don’t let those wrinkles and gray hair fool you.

I found this next picture on Facebook. 

If you look very closely to the left of middle of the image, in front of the brick wall, you’ll see too old codgers sitting in chairs. That’s us. I was prepared to stand for the whole time, but Mike brought some chairs. When we saw other chair-sitters, we decided it was legit to bring them out. We both stood up and wandered around several times, but the chairs were appreciated.

Here's some good advice provided on Facebook by the "Alt National Park Service."

I'll start with some of the photos that require a comment, and then I'll just show you all the pictures of signs. There are a lot of them. Please don't feel compelled to look at every one, but some of them are pretty darned clever. As I mentioned, there is a protest at this location every Saturday morning. This sign was permanently mounted.

There was a table set up with donuts, cookies, and coffee. The next signs were provided by the organizers.

This one made me sniff a little. As a military brat, I'm extremely concerned about the prospect of "boots on the ground" in Iran, and some have already died.

Here are a few more signs and banners provided by the organizers.

This guy was also driving around the circle at the protest back in October.

And, finally, for this grouping...

Okay, and there were a few signs that were made by folks after my own heart.

In my wanderings, I loved the costumes and the hats.

There were lots of frog hats. I love that Portland adopted the frog as the symbol of its resistance.

There's a free pattern online for knitters. I'm not a knitter, but hey...if you are, then have at it!

I saw a few of these online.

This frog was at our protest along with a froggy friend of his.

Also, Lady Liberty. (Just FYI, I've blurred or pixelated any recognizable faces. Sadly, I can no longer trust my government to respect and honor our Constitutional First Amendment right to peaceful protest.)

This is the second sign she was carrying.

I saw a woman wearing this hat. When I asked permission to take a picture, she informed me they were giving them away for free just about ten feet from where I was standing.

Well. Doncha know I needed me one of those. 

This spot is a great place to hold our protest because there are lots of cars driving by. Most everyone honks in support.

At the protest in October, I'd say about 2/3 of the cars driving by were honking in support. We also saw a few who were less supportive. Yesterday, we saw very few of these cretins.

And I think those are all the images I wanted to comment about. Here is a whole slew of some of my favorite signs. There are a lot of them. Bail out if you get overloaded, but I couldn't leave out any of them.

Okay, my friends. Let's get ready for the next one. And let's hope November brings us some good news.