Unit Maintenance

Removing a couple of broken trees:

Sweeping down spider-webs from every outside surface.

Wondering how the tenants "lost" the curtains:

At least they replaced them with something.

Patching and painting lots of little dings and scrapes, particularly up the staircase:

And the dishwasher is dead so I need to replace it. Not while the unit is empty, though.

(Very) Slow Stitching

At a sit and sew day today, instead of basting more charity quilts, I spent a little time on my Rajah Revisited quilt:

I finished appliquéing a couple of those pieces to the left-hand border, then attached the border when I got home. Considering it is 3 months since I attached the border to the right-hand side, this is turning into a very slow project indeed.

Another One Done

Charity quilt No. 10:

You can't see the quilting well from either the front or the back. Perhaps on this close-up you can get a sense of it:

There are swirly feathers all over it. This time I was practising Angela Walters' "Custom Feathers" lesson from her Free-Motion Quilting Along.

A Year at a Glance

Here is 53 weeks of top temperatures:

A reminder of the colour scheme, with the counts of days:
   45.1 and over     black             0, fortunately!
   40.1 - 45             purple           2
   35.1 - 40             magenta        5
   30.1 - 35             red              24
   25.1 - 30             orange        59
   20.1 - 25             yellow         65
   15.1 - 20             green          54
   10.1 - 15             aqua/teal   123
    5.1 - 10              blue             38
    5 and below       pale blue      0, also fortunately.

One of these counts is wrong because I am missing one day somewhere, and I don't feel like going and counting them all again right at the moment. But it is accurate enough for you to see that one third of my year was in the aqua/teal range!

The bottom corner will have an explanation of how the days are arranged in each hexie, the temperature chart in the top left needs some numbers, and there will be a top border saying something like, "Daily top temperatures at Lal Lal 27/5/2017 to 1/6/2018".

I will link this to Sarah's Weather Report post later in the week.

Here's the link-up.

Waverley Quilt Show

Waverley Patchworkers held their exhibition over the weekend. Theirs is always a show worth seeing, so I took the long drive to get there. Actually it was longer than it might have been, as I detoured to collect a friend who I knew would enjoy it, and then took her home afterwards.

When we arrived we made a bee-line for the café area to revive ourselves. As usual, the refreshments were outstanding, and included several gluten-free options which was appreciated by my friend. As we sat and ate we could peruse the "Birds of a Feather" challenge entries which were hanging in the café area. Here are some that I really liked:

The spinebills above were very striking. Compare them with the real thing as seen in my garden last week. I think the maker did a fantastic job, and wasn't surprised to discover the spinebills won the viewers' choice. Below you can see the beautiful hummingbird made by a friend, which I had seen in progress and loved the final result, and some very whimsical birds which were runner-up in the challenge.

This view from one of the entrances to the main part of the exhibition shows that there was quite a range of different styles of quilt on display:

Just a few that caught my eye:

I've seen lots of versions of Lucy Boston's "Patchwork of the Crosses" quilt, but this is the first time I've seen one made in traditional batik fabrics (rather than quilter's batiks):

Close-up of one block:

The quilt is called "Lucy Goes to South-East Asia", and was made by Trudi Byers. I love it!

I always like to look at the quilting, and this stood out as a lovely complement to the appliqué:

One small block on the prize-winning "Caswell Quilt" by Rivka Waxman, quilted beautifully by Leanne Kaufman.

Here's a small section of a quilt designed, constructed, and quilted by Linda Steele; "A Time for all Seasons":

I was interested in how Linda handled the feathers on the inside of the circles, as that's something I've been working on lately. It was no surprise to find out later that this quilt won the viewers' choice. I didn't photograph the whole quilt, but you can see it on the Waverley blog here. I'm sure we will be seeing it again in one of the bigger shows.

The last photos are of another quilt designed, constructed, and quilted by the same person; Jennifer Wilkins' "Travelling Kaleidoscopes 3 - Heavens Above":

I loved the quilting, and the couched embellishment:

And the borders:

Check out the back:

Congratulations to everyone involved in putting on this wonderful show!

Last Stitch

Well the last stitch joining hexagons together:

After this I did appliqué this rosette down, completing the final week of my year quilt. But due to circumstances beyond my control I didn't get photos of that, or complete the assembly of the rows of the quilt, which was my plan for this afternoon. That will have to wait.

Week Fifty-Three

This is it! The final temperature rosette:

Not at all sewn together yet; that will happen at a sit and sew day tomorrow. Here's this week's temperatures:

1/06/2018      13.7    aqua/teal
31/05/2018    10.9    aqua/teal
30/05/2018    11.6    aqua/teal
29/05/2018    12.2    aqua/teal
28/05/2018    16.8    green
27/05/2018    16.6    green
26/05/2018    17.3    green

I was wrong two weeks ago when I thought I'd seen the last of green. The 365th day of the year, which would have been missed if I had stopped at 52 weeks, was a green day. Now that June has arrived, I don't mind wintry weather.

The quilt top is not complete, as I am planning a couple of explanatory sections around the edges.

Linked to Sarah's weekly weather report., where Sarah is getting ready to start another year, Pamela has already started her second year, and Sharon has about 3 weeks to go on her year.

How I spent the first day of winter:

Enjoying the sun at Ballarat Wildlife Park! Sunbathing meercat above, Tasmanian devil below:

Common wombat:

Koala:

People I don't know feeding kangaroos:

I fed kangaroos too, but I couldn't photograph myself doing it. The kangaroos are a different species to the ones we see around here (like yesterday). These are Kangaroo Island kangaroos from South Australia.