Bee-utiful Gift and Stash Progress Report

Today I was given this gorgeous  "a-bee-c" pincushion made by a friend:

Actually I don't know what the real name of the pattern is, but it should be something like that. Isn't it lovely? Thank you, Jeanette!


Progress on reducing my stash in February:

Thread:

Two spools emptied.
Year to date: 5 emptied spools, which originally held 2,350 metres of thread.

Dress fabric:
Nothing used, nothing added.
Year to date: Down 4 metres.

Quilt fabric:
Used 2.3 metres, unexpectedly given 7.75 metres!
Year to date: Up 4.15 metres.

Transferring Skills

I've been stuck on my Rajah Revisited quilt for quite some time. Since October last year to be exact. Four months of no progress because of this:

The flower with skinny pointy petals which is meant to be appliquéd in each corner of the second border. With skinny pointy points that are beyond my current appliqué skill level.

Today it suddenly struck me that I could try making these petals using the interfacing technique I've been using for the Lori Holt Bloom quilt. So I made a couple of test petals, but even with trimming away almost all of the seam allowance my points were lumpy and ugly looking.

Then another idea hit me, and I looked through the Bloom templates and the templates from the Amanda Herring Friendship quilt. I found that one of Amanda's templates was the same length as the Rajah petals, just a bit wider:

So I made a couple more test petals, and I think I can get a sharper point with these slightly fatter petals. I'm going to give it a go, anyway!

I found diamonds on this fabric in the colours I wanted to use for the petals, so now I have 24 petals ready as my next hand-sewing task.

Extension Table

This is why I went to Geelong on Wednesday:

To collect the extension table for my "new" machine. The lady I bought the machine from had just found the table when doing some more cleaning up at her mother's home, so contacted me to let me know. I was very happy to hear from her, as I had been wondering about ordering one (if they were still available).

It has taken me over two months since I bought it, but the Janome is now set up in my sewing room. And the extra flat surface of the extension table makes working on fiddly things like the next Bloom block easier.

Baby Banksia

Last month I showed this photo of a banksia cone:

Very like the big bad banskia men which were the scary villains in May Gibb's stories,

 although with with its eyes all closed.

A couple of cones came home with us, and after we had had pizzas one day, the cones spent some time in the hot pizza oven. That opened up the seed-holding "eyes", enabling the seeds to be collected. (And making the cones look more like the nasty banksia men.)

The seeds were sown in the same sort of propagation tubes we use for the TreeProject seedlings, and look at this:

A baby banksia tree! About half a dozen have come up so far.

Edited later - turns out that this is NOT a banksia seedling! Find out what it is in this post.

I Might Need Zebra Clothes

Scientists researching why zebras have stripes have found that the stripes confuse blood-sucking flies.

Story from The Guardian: Why the zebra got its stripes.

In an experiment that involved zebras, horses, and horses dressed up as zebras, they found that Tabanid flies (think: march flies) didn't land on zebras or on the zebra-print horse coats as frequently as they did on naked horses or the exposed parts of the dressed-up horses.

Do I need to make myself some zebra-print clothes?  It's not all good news - the horseflies in the experiment still buzzed around the zebras, they just didn't land. They either veered away or bounced off. I don't really want march flies buzzing around me and bouncing off me.

Geelong Botanic Gardens

I had a reason go to Geelong today, so added in a visit to the botanic gardens because the Friends' Nursery is open on Wednesday mornings.

Perennial borders looking fantastic:

Also came across their wonderful ginkgo:

This tree is on the National Trust's Register of Significant Trees.

We enjoyed morning tea in the gardens. A few plants from the nursery came home, as well as a few more from the Wombat Gully nursery.

The main reason for my trip to Geelong will have to wait for another blog post once I have tidied up my sewing room a bit.

Slow Growing

Two months ago I was happy to see a little shoot appear above the soil in this pot, and now I am happy to report that it is still alive and growing:

It is Zanzibar gem (Zamioculcas zamiifolia), an allegedly indestructible house plant.  Although at this rate it may be some time before the shoot develops into a leaf and actually looks like a plant.