Whooooo .... Meow .... Whoooooo .... Meo ..... Mmmmmmmmmm

Sophie could have been dinner the other night. There is a pair of hooters who like to sit in our neighbor’s tree – no, I don’t mean a couple of noses – and we hear “whooo, whoooo” just as it’s turning from dusk to dark. I left the patio door open when I went onto the deck to take a picture and about two minutes after I’d come back inside I looked over at the door and saw Sophie pacing back and forth. I thought I’d done a better job of sneaking out to take the picture this time because the owl just sat there looking in my direction instead of flying off which is what usually happens. But after seeing panicky kitty pacing I realized he was probably just distracted by the possibility of “Kitty

À la carte".

Our new deck rails have become the favorite place for doves, pigeons, sparrows and all kinds of birds to sit and sun themselves and leave small presents after they’ve gorged themselves from one of the birdfeeders in the yard behind us.

This morning we had a woodpecker on the deck. He was pretty but every time I see a woodpecker my first instinct is to run outside, spread my body in front of the house, look him in the eye and dare him to come near the wood siding with his beak. “Just try it Woody. I don’t care if you are one of the babies that grew up in the space between the siding and the wall inside our living room.”








I was thinking about another bird this afternoon when I was working on Pierce’s “baby” quilt and wondering how Leslie and Ryan could have known how much he would be like his middle name, Kestrel, when they named him. He’s small but fierce and when he circles Emerson and Myra before he dives in, grabs a toy and then swoops out, he is just like that small falcon that “hovers over its prey and then drops down on it”.

I still have hours and hours of quilting ahead of me but the piecing is finally finished. Here’s how I went about making it.

First I had to come up with a plan ...

... and then, since (as is apparent from my “plan”) I can't draw a bird, I searched on-line to find a line-drawing of a Kestrel ...

... which I traced it onto paper.

I had to find photos of kestrels so I could search for the perfect fabric ...




 









... and then it was just a matter of cutting the pieces, appliquéing them on ...











... adding the borders and ta da!

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Whooooo .... Meow .... Whoooooo .... Meo ..... Mmmmmmmmmm