Forgotten About

My sister went to a quilt show in Toowoomba last week, and sent me a few photos. This is the first one she sent:

That looks familiar! I had completely forgotten about Rhododendron Trail, last year's Bonnie Hunter mystery. How can that happen? 

On the 5th February I posted this photo of mine:

and said "The next step is an aqua border." Of course what really happened is that I put it away and forgot all about it. 

So now I have been reminded! I couldn't even remember where it was, but I found it and took it to a "sit and sew" day on Saturday. There I could lay it out and work out what I wanted to do for the borders. I should have taken some photos of that, but I didn't think of it at the time. 

Bonnie's original pattern has a flying geese border, which you will notice in the first photo that the unknown maker in Toowoomba left off all together. I had a bunch of flying geese made, but not enough to do the border the way Bonnie did. I didn't want to make more, so this is what I came up with:

I've sewn the flying geese together end to end. There will be a narrow aqua border between the top and these strips of flying geese. How narrow? There is not much of this aqua fabric left. I'm not quite sure how I will handle the corners, because the decision I make on the width of the aqua border will affect the size of the corner pieces.

Now I am trimming and stay-stitching the edges of the body of the quilt, ready to add the borders:

One side done.

Gift Blocks

Along with several other people, I volunteered to make blocks for a quilt for someone's significant birthday in a few months. The background fabric was provided, and a photo of blocks already made, as reference for the sorts of fabrics we should use.

Here are my two completed blocks, and then the reference photo:

I hope they will blend in well enough. I think the final quilt will be 4 x 4 blocks. I will look forward to seeing it when it is all assembled!

The Garden in September

September might be the beginning of spring, but a lot of the garden is still looking like winter. Here's what is flowering now, although I'll warn you some of the photos are not in properly in focus as I had somehow stuffed up my camera's settings. 

Let's start with a nice long view that shows several leucadendrons, the leafless wattle, and my big rusty ball:

(Compare it with this photo from 2018: 

Things have grown a bit!)

Hellebores:

Bergenia:

My "Limelight" protea has a couple of open flowers and quite a few buds to come:

Last month the Ovens Wattle was just starting to flower, now all those buds have opened:

This, on the other hand, is a bud that won't be opening:

Half-eaten magnolia bud. I don't know what ate it. Sadly most of the buds on my magnolia failed to develop this year. This is one of only 2 or 3 that were going to open. So now I can only look forward to 1 or 2 flowers.

I won't include photos of all the orchard blossom -  see my previous post for that.

Euphorbias and Viburnum tinus:

Camellia "Volunteer":

and camellia "Fragrant Pink" - or Fragrant something - I've forgotten and it is dark and rainy as I write this, so I'm not going out to check!

 Some of the sea of daffodils:

 A couple of sad-looking Lachenalia:

I'm sure there were more than two originally, but I think they had been forgotten about. I'd forgotten them, anyway! They haven't been weeded, and perhaps they don't like it as wet as it has been.

Hyacinth past its best, but just to record that they are still there:

Lastly, one of the cyclamens:

It seems I've skipped the daisies, the rosemary, lavender, and I'm not sure what else.  But I went back and looked at previous September garden posts, and there were a lot more flowers then than there are this year.

Maybe October will be more floriferous!

Prunus and Pins

 In the orchard spring has arrived for the various types of Prunus trees.

Almond:

Plum:

Peach:

There are apricots too, but it looks like I missed photographing them.

Today I went to the guild's sit and sew day. I took a machine and some fabric to assemble a backing for my Positivity quilt, then got it layered and pinned ready for quilting:

It is nice to have that step done.

For anyone interested in making this quilt, Preeti's tutorial is here. The blocks really are simple and fun to make.

And this is the link to her post about the Positivity quilt along she ran earlier this year.

Spring!

 Happy Wattle Day!

This is a blackwood, or Acacia melanoxylon, flowering for wattle day.

Other signs of spring include grape hyacinths:

and daffodils:

When we were out walking this afternoon, the dogs alerted us to an echidna:

We often see evidence of them digging out ant nests, but this is the first one we have actually seen since last summer.

In the sewing room I made some more Positivity blocks, then pinned them up to see how they look:

I made the first couple in June, but only started working on them again in the last week. With a border this will be large enough for a donation quilt, so I might just sew them together now rather than make more. Although they are a bit of fun to make so who knows?

Happy spring to my southern hemisphere friends.