Five-Petalled Beauties

I couldn't pick just one of these for today, so here are three beautiful five-petalled blooms.

First, almond blossom looking dainty. The bees were coming and going, so I hope that means we will have lots of almonds.


Next, a more unusual plant. This is a native sundew from our block at Lal Lal, transplanted to a tub in the backyard 3 weeks ago. It's still alive, and is flowering today.


Lastly, my vireya "Chayya" has opened for the first time since being scorched by a high temperatures in early 2009.

Beautiful!

Plenty of Time!

Today I sewed my first ever bag:


It is the Nicole Mallalieu "Day Bag". I bought the pattern when I did the straps workshop with Nikki back in March. Then a week later a friend was giving away this fabric on her blog, and I thought it would be ideal for testing the pattern and making a bag for my niece whose birthday was months away. Guess when that birthday is? Tomorrow!

So between other commitments today, I managed to get most of the bag done. I still have a zip-pocket and the lining to construct, but I'll get those done in the morning. Of course if I had done this yesterday, I could have entered it in Nikki's competition, but we won't mention that.

Camera Settings

Today I tried changing the colour settings on my camera to try and fix its dislike of purple.

Automatic setting:


Adjusted setting:

That is a little bit warmer, but it is still nowhere near the colour of the actual flower. But at least I've learnt something today!

Meanwhile, I dropped off the raffle quilt for the next person this morning, for her to add the binding and the label. Here's a not very good shot showing what I did with the borders. Not much, just straight lines and a flower-like thing in each corner.

I've had positive feedback from the people who've seen it so far, which is a relief. Now I suppose I should get stuck-in to my own little pile of unquilted quilts.

Darker Star

Last week the first light-blue Ipheion Star (Ipheion uniflorum) was open, and now it is the turn of the darker purple variety. My camera doesn't like warm purples, and has cooled down the colour here.
I think I need to learn how to change the colour balance settings, and try this one again.

Getting There

This afternoon I did some more quilting on the raffle quilt. I took this picture before I'd finished, as the sun was getting low and I wanted to get the shot without using the flash. Afterwards I finished quilting all the stars. Tonight I'll be running-in lots more thread ends! It is quite nice having a quilt draped over your knees on a cold night.


Then tomorrow I better quilt the border, which is what I was meant to be doing in the first place.

Quilting

This afternoon I was handed the raffle quilt. Three other quilters have worked on it so far, sewing the grid and the diagonals to outline the stars. My job is to do some quilting in the borders. However, the whole thing looked too flat to me, so I decided it needed more than just the grid quilted. I quilted for a while before it got dark, then spent the evening running-in ends while watching TV. The ends took much longer than the sewing! Back view so far:

These little flower shapes are between the stars, which will also get some extra embellishment. I better find out when this needs to be done by...

Open House 2

Second day of the Open House weekend, and a chance to visit more buildings I've walked past and wondered about. This is a light-well inside the building which was the High Court from 1928-80, the Federal Court from 1977-99, and is now part of the Supreme Court.