Saturday, August 13, 2016

Triple-Mitered Borders DONE

Hello Everyone,
 
Another Butterscotch Baskets is ready to be quilted! I was determined to finish the triple-mitered borders yesterday so I could put this quilt in the almost finished column.
 

It seemed as though I stitched miles of the triple border together.  Who designed this quilt? Wink. I must talk with the designer and tell them to put a spool of thread into each pattern.  When I made my strip sets, I pressed the top and bottom the opposite pressing direction as the sides.


By doing this, the strip sets nestled together perfectly on the front and back.

 
Yes, mitered corners take more time, but I absolutely love the way they look.
 


We are up at the cabin this weekend to attend a Town Hall meeting regarding the pine bark beetle which is destroying our neighborhood.  This is what we see directly across the street from the cabin.  Every pine tree is either dead or dying.


Driving through the neighborhood you see piles of trees waiting to be hauled away.  The average cost to have a tree removed is $1,000 per tree.  We have 40 pine trees on our 2/3 of an acre.  That's a lot of quilting fabric! 

There will be representatives from the state at the meeting today.....and I'm sure they are going to get an earful of complaints.     Similar pine bark beetle outbreaks have been successfully stopped in other states by spraying.  Our governor refuses to spray because one of the chemicals in the spray is banned in California.  So the alternative is to let the state burn to the ground and have the worst fire storms imaginable, let trees fall on people and homes, loose all of the habitats for the forest critters, loose the carbon sequestration which the trees provide.......and see property values plummet.  If you buy a cabin in the woods, good luck getting homeowner's insurance. Luckily for us we are grandfathered in to our policy. 

Mr. Joe has treated our trees twice with SPLAT.  It's an expensive tube of pheromone repellant which is like hanging a sign on the tree telling the beetles "No Vacancy".  So far so good.....but that could all change.  Even trees our neighbors treated with SPLAT are dying.

In all of the articles that we've read, it is beneficial to water your forest trees.  A healthy tree has a fighting chance to survive the infestation.  But guess what folks, we are still in a drought.  We are banned from watering our trees. I wonder if I can applique while I'm in prison?

Soon,
Lynn 

8 comments:

  1. Your quilt is lovely, and yes, mitered corners look really nice. I pray you never have a fire in your area!

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  2. Has your neighborhood approachd logging companies? Check our what British Columbia is doing. Pine beetle wood is in demand in some areas... Makes beautiful furniture with the stains in it.

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  3. You and Gail have accomplished quite the feat churning out another Butterscotch Baskets in record time! I'm sure the extra cookies helped! I could just stomp and scream over what's happening to your precious forest! Doesn't sound like the governor knows the difference between using the banned chemical or losing the forest! Hope the meeting gave you all some good answers!
    Cheers!

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  4. Learning to miter borders is on my to do list

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  5. So so sorry to hear about your trees. I think the smoky mountains had the same problem several years ago. I don't know what ever happened there.

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  6. Hope the meeting went well and you can now save some of those beautiful trees. Xx

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  7. Oh Lynn...I hope the meeting turned out better than it sounds like it would. This is not good...

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  8. Another beautiful quilt in the books! Good luck on the meeting - hope you can get to a solution without serving any time.

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