The Garden in April

A few parts of the garden are undergoing a renovation process at the moment. Things have been dug up, relocated, trimmed, pruned, and generally disrupted. Hopefully it all means that next year the garden will be flourishing!

Fortunately there are still flowers to be found.

Variegated ajuga 

Tulbaghia

Dahlia

Lavender

Graffiti geranium (really a pelargonium)

Treasure flowers (gazanias)

Baby sage

Echeveria "Topsy turvy"

Pink gaura

A pink salvia that I don't remember from previous years?

Abutilon

Viburnum tinus

Cosmos

Nerines

Zinnia

Fuchsia

Red hot pokers

Thryptomene

Correa

Hakea "Burrendong beauty"

Lion's ear, Leonotis leonurus

Melaleuca nesophila

Dietes

White Japanese windflowers

And pink ones.

I've skipped a few because this post is too long already. But I had to include this one:

Jonquils!

The first spring flowers, long before autumn is finished. In the background, the leaves of my redbud are turning yellow, but haven't started falling yet. I've had jonquils open in May before, when living in the city,  but here they usually start in June or July.

Bulk Buy

My supply of sewing machine needles was almost depleted, so I went looking to buy some more. There are not many places nearby that sell them. 

There is a Spotlight. They sell all varieties of Schmetz needles at $8 for 5 needles, but the local store seems to be always out of stock of the commonly used sizes. I could mail order from their warehouse, but that would add $12.99 for delivery.

There is a Lincraft. They no longer sell Schmetz needles - they seem to have moved down-market in all their haberdashery items. Their needles are  $3-odd for 5, but very poor quality. I had one bad experience and wouldn't buy them again.

My only other option is a sewing machine dealer, who sells needles labelled "Janome", which are also about $8 for 5.

So I went looking online, to see what I could find. I placed an order on 1st April, and only 2 weeks later (not bad considering the Easter holidays) this arrived from the UK:

For approximately $33 including postage, I now have 50 Schmetz needles in the size I use most. Hooray! That should last me quite a while.

I wonder why they don't sell 10-packs in Australia?

Apron

A couple of days ago I had to jump up in the middle of a meal and throw the top I was wearing into the washing machine, as I had just splashed some tomato-based sauce on it. Fortunately it did not stain, but it did push me to finally make myself an apron.

I've admired the Japanese style cross-back aprons on various internet sites, and downloaded 3 free patterns over the years. It was time to actually try one out! I decided to use Tessuti's pattern as it has an A0 copy-shop file included, so I wouldn't have to assemble lots of smaller sheets of paper. I got the large scale print done at Officeworks for $4.35 - worth it to avoid sticking together the 25 pages of the print-at-home file, I thought.

Picture from Tessuti's site

One potential issue with the pattern is the sizing - "One size". I am probably outside the size range they had in mind when drafting the pattern - taller and wider. So rather than use anything too precious, I found a couple of remnant pieces in my fabric stash that I could use for a trial version. I made the pattern exactly to the instructions, and it looks pretty good on a coat hanger:

Front

Back

However, on me it is a different story. The apron is obliviously too small. No photos, you will have to take my word for it! The cross-over, which on Tessuti's sample and on a coat-hanger is towards the waist, is between my shoulder-blades. There is no rear coverage - which perhaps doesn't matter for practical reasons, but it is not a good look.

On this close-up you can maybe see how I had to use a different fabric for the straps. I didn't have enough of either for the whole apron:

The top edge is too close to my face, which adds to the impression that I am wearing an apron a few sizes too small. I could fix that by cutting longer straps. I think they will need to be quite a bit longer, as the "armhole" section, which looks like it is at waist level or below on the Tessuti models, is well above my waist. The apron length in the Tessuti photos appears to be at least knee-length, but on me it is mid thigh - only just below finger-tip length.

So, I can wear this apron, and it should offer some protection for my clothes. But it does not have the look I wanted.

Adjustments required:

Add length to straps.

Add length to apron - above the waist, and at the hem.

Add width to apron - centre front, and also under the arm (slash and spread pattern).

Don't add the pocket until the apron is made, so it can be put where most useful.

Progress

 I can't believe we are a week in to April already. How did that happen? 

I missed showing the progress on these steps:

They have been like this for a few days. There's still more to do, but they will definitely make it easier to get through this part of the garden once the wet weather starts. The bluestone pitchers are these ones.

When I came home from work yesterday, one of the "temporary" kitchen lights had been replaced. 

Then today a second

and then a third were installed:

I bought these pendant lights a couple of months ago, and it is lovely to have them out of their boxes and hanging from the ceiling now. The cardboard ones from Ikea did the job (for 5.5 years) but I think these ones look a lot better.

I've been working on my WOOFA unfinished project for April, Trail Mix:

So far I have only stitched in the ditch between the blocks, but it is progress.

Late today a couple of ducks joined the menagerie:

The two on the left are the new ones. They are like clones of each other, so we will never tell them apart. They teamed up with the old ducks to form a flock quite quickly. None of the "pecking order" conflict you see with chooks.

As I was waiting for the ducks to get close enough to photograph, I noticed some little eyes looking at me from the crabapple tree:

It is a tiny Ewing's tree frog!

Pinwheels and Memories

Because I finished my WOOFA project for March (see previous post), I had a few days up my sleeve to play with the Birdhouse Quilt.

Amongst the boxes of stuff that came from my mother's sewing room, I found one containing lots of "Quick Patchwork Papers" from the old Quilter's Barn in Loch. (Quick search of my blog shows that the last Loch Quilt Hanging was 11 years ago!) I remember Mum getting me to buy some papers for her many years ago, and not knowing what I was asking for in the shop. But what I got were sheets of a thin paper printed with strange triangle shapes:

5cm half-square-triangle papers Copyright 1994

At the time I hadn't started quilting, and had no idea what half square triangles were, or what the papers were for. 

I found an obituary online for Julie Wallace who was the founder of the Quilter's Barn and designer of the papers (she died in 2014, aged 60). She apparently originally designed them for teaching patchwork to children. Now there are several different companies selling this sort of product, and I think they all are designed so that you sew continuous lines across the paper. But the Quilter's Barn papers had to be cut apart into individual squares before you used them.

I don't know what Mum was planning to do with these papers, but she had cut most of them apart. I realised they were the right size for the pinwheel borders for the Birdhouse Quilt, so I used up all of them:

Pinwheels in progress

The border takes 40 pinwheels, and there were enough papers to make 39 of them. I don't think it was the fastest way to make HSTs, but it didn't take much thought, and was easy to do while listening to an audiobook.

Here's how the Birdhouse Quilt is looking now:

I know it looks like a mess! Most of this is still just pinned roughly in place. The "posts" will eventually be behind the flowers. I will make some more flowers before I commit to the final layout. I have hand-appliqued some of the doors onto the birdhouses so far. I might just do all of the applique by hand as it will give me a take-along project for sit and sew days.

Now I need to get my April WOOFA project done quickly so that I can get back to the Birdhouse.

Finished

I've finished my WOOFA (Working on, or finishing a....) project for this month. Hooray, that's 3 months in a row!

Here it is hanging on the line to dry:

My "left over" Frolic. It has been a top for just over a year, and now it is done. I needed to give it a wash as it got a little bit of machine oil on it during the quilting. The cotton batting shrank a bit in the wash and gave the quilt the wrinkled-up look that some people prefer. 

It is very overcast today, so the quilt looks much greyer than in real life. I'm planning on handing it to our Quilts of Love coordinator tomorrow, so probably won't get the chance to photograph it in better light.

Linked to Cheryll's end of the month WOOFA Party: Check it out.

Next month's project: Trail Mix, which has been a top since October. (Although I did get it basted earlier this month, so that gives me a head start.)

Binding Happening

 This is a job for doing in good light:

Sewing dark blue binding with dark blue thread.  At least it means this quilt is nearly done!