Quilter Patti Zwick, an artist who works inside and outside at Iowa City's New Pioneer Coop, quilted/"blanketed" a tree outside of New Pi's entrance in honor of her late friend Bette Hugo, the elderly and somewhat cranky grey-haired cashier who grew on acquaintance if you could look past the barnacles and get to know her. She had a hard life. Stage 4 lung cancer got her in the end.
I kept thinking I'd just come on the wrong day, and she wasn't working that day. Turns out she hadn't worked there in months, not since spring, I think.
It's hard to do Patti's art and sentiments justice in a photo or two or three, but I sure tried. It was the kind of funereal, gray, cold, spitting rain and sleet day that set the bright art and themes of Patti's little birds in bright colors and quilted fabrics on the tree trunk and early branches off to perfection.