Faces

Two of the Zoo Animals blocks needed embroidered faces. I probably should have done them before assembling the quilt top, but they are done now, anyway:

I pieced a back for this quilt earlier this week, so now the next step is basting.

Flower Surprises

I was very happy to see this flower open this morning:

It means that I managed to bring a tuber of the Mystic Star dahlias here. I dug up several from my old garden, but most of them got lost in the temporary garden last year. I dug up what I could find there, but until now none of them have flowered so I haven't been sure just what I had.

The crinum lily sent up several flower spikes in December, but here's another one:

Still Slicing

The wood-cutting mornings are still ongoing. From certain angles the piles of trunks to be cut up do look like they are getting a little smaller. But even loads like this

don't make a huge difference.

Gift from a Neighbour

A couple of hoya cuttings she propagated:

She doesn't know what variety they are, as they are cuttings from a cutting she took from somewhere. Any hoya flowers are amazing, so it will just be a nice surprise some time in the future. I'll have to find a nice sheltered spot for them.

Classic Toadstool

Emerging under oak trees not far from here:

Are they the introduced Amanita muscaria, the fly agaric? My book of fungi is somewhere still in a box. But the internet seems to think that's what they are.

Growing Things

A few things around the garden today:

Vireya Princess Alexandra is starting to bloom again after a few months without flowers:

While looking for other buds, I found this on one of her stems:

I presume it is some sort of wasp nest, but I don't know what. Or if the two holes mean that the occupant has moved out?

My cymbidium orchid, Peter Pan X Snow Eagle "Malcolm", is fully open:

And has another flower spike developing:

The zygocactus (Schlumbergera truncata) are starting to flower, even though traditionally this one hasn't flowered until late in May:

And finally, the last of the TreeProject seedlings have started to appear:

Totem poles, Melaleuca decussata. I was beginning to think they would never germinate.

Tops Done

Here's the two tops I assembled for the guild's "Quilts of Love" program:

They were assembled as disappearing 9-patches, (as per these instructions) but although that method has some novelty value, I don't think I would do it again unless I could solve this issue:

Because of the way the blocks were made, pressed, and then cut apart, many seams had to be re-pressed to face the opposite way when I came to the final assembly. And a few just couldn't be. See the right-hand seam between the green and white? It was pressed to the green, and has been stitched over so can't be reversed. Unfortunately the seam below it, between the white and the dogs, has also been previously stitched over and can't be reversed. But it is pointing the same way.

All that double pressing, and the frustration of seams that just could not nest, was enough to negate any advantage for me of the initial 9-patch construction. I would rather have just stitched the whole thing one row at a time, pressing everything to the dark. That way nothing would have needed to be re-pressed, and it would have all nested beautifully. Next time!