Quilting Number Twenty

Before the new mystery quilt starts I've got a few projects I would like to clear away. One is the last couple of charity quilt tops made during our workshop last year.

This is the twentieth, and second last one to quilt. This top is one that can be seen in the linked post. I'm quilting it with a yellow and orange variegated thread, which is very hard to see against these vivid fabrics. I will be glad when this one is finished!

Frolic Colours Again

I'm still playing round with fabric selections for the Frolic mystery quilt. One thought was to replace the medium blue with purple:

To get more of an idea of how they might look in the final quilt, I calculated what proportion of the quilt each colour makes up, and experimented with a few options:

These all look a bit dark, but that is more to do with lighting conditions than the colours of the fabrics. This probably looks confusing, but the second one down is Bonnie's selection, with dark blue, medium blue, and aqua. The other three are my variations using purple in place of either aqua or medium blue. 

However after that playing round, I was sent a list of the DMC colours equivalent to Bonnie's paint chips.  They are 311, 3839, 3817, 3348 and 315. This is what they look like:

The "aqua" colour is not what I would call aqua. To me it is green, and in fact DMC call it "Light celadon green". The "raspberry" colour is also different to what I expected. DMC call that one "Medium Dark Antique Mauve". Seeing the actual colours is interesting. Most of the "aqua" fabrics I had selected, and which had not looked quite right, would be out if I stuck to this colour scheme. 

I also have very little fabric that matches the medium blue, or the celedon. I want to do this without buying fabric, so more playing around with possibilities is likely to occur before the first clue arrives.

Insects in Flowers

This is Pollinator Week, so here are a few insects in flowers.

 Bees busy in the pigface:

Hoverfly in a Californian poppy:

A horehound bug on lavender:

Another horehound bug on borage:

Horehound bugs, Agonoscelis rutila, are a puzzle. They are native to Australia, but according to the internet aren't found on native plants. They suck the sap of horehound, which is a non-native weed. So what did they eat before horehound arrived? Something doesn't add up. And where did they come from to be on our lavender and borage? Lavender is at least in the same family as horehound, but borage isn't. Perhaps the internet is wrong! 

Finally, some Mesembryanthemum with no visible insects:

There were some small native bees buzzing around them, but I didn't manage to get any photos of them.

Magpie Babies

This spring we have a currawong nest and a kookaburra nest on our block, and the magpies that include our block in their territory ("our" magpies) nested just across the road.

The baby magpies fledged last Tuesday, and now appear in various places around our block, calling for food.

Three babies:

An adult arrives with food for one:

The adults apparently feed each baby in turn. They will feed them for another two to tree months. Looking after 3 babies takes 3 adults, so the parent birds plus a helper are constantly searching for worms for these big hungry babies.

Ballarat Show

Today was a public holiday in Ballarat, for The Show. I didn't have to go to work, so I went to the Show, despite the intermittent rain and hail.

I had to check out the results in the patchwork section:

The photos aren't brilliant because of the reflections on the glass cabinets. But in the photo above, the white quilt hanging at the back is a lovely hand-quilted wholecloth. It won "Best Hand Quilting", and 1st prize in the category, "Traditional Quilt, no commercial quilting". In front of it on the left you can see some of my Good Fortune, which was awarded 2nd prize in that category. My temperature quilt was in the same category, but there are only two prizes in each section, so it was out of luck.

Below are some entries in the "Innovative Small Article/Quilt" section:

My bees won 1st prize, and the quilt to the left of it, with magpies, got the 2nd prize. You might notice an extra envelope pinned to the bees - that is the "Best Machine Quilting" prize, which is a voucher for Gail's Patchwork Emporium. That was where I bought the flower panel, so I'm glad she liked what I did with it.

The quilt on the far left, with the blue ribbon attached, is by Suzanne Lyle. Her quilt depicting gum tree bark was a winner in this show last year, then went on to win in the region, and then in September won the state prize at the Melbourne Show. The trophy in front of it (shaped like a map of Victoria) and a $300 Spotlight voucher were her prizes for the state win.

The cakes are in the same pavilion. Several members of Ballaarat Quilters had challenged each other to enter the Ginger Fluff competition. Suzanne (the quilt champion above) had asked me for some duck eggs for her entry, so I was interested to see how she went. She described herself as "No baker", and said she has never made a sponge cake before.

The winner is the one closest to the camera. The lady who made it is a regular winner in the baking competitions. She also won the plain sponge, the chocolate sponge, and several other categories. The second prize isn't visible, but it was won by a man who competes with his wife every year, and this was his first award. But the judging was close. See the nicely risen cake in the background (in the middle of 3 less-risen ones)? That is Suzanne's, made with our duck eggs. She didn't get the 2nd prize because she had some uneven colour on top, indicating that she hadn't quite mixed it enough. But it is a very impressive cake from a novice sponge maker!

Between the showers we had a look around the rest of the show. If you are going to ride a camel, getting on via a platform looks like a good idea:

My experience of camel riding is that the standing up is the scariest part. Although it is also a bit scary if the saddle comes loose as you are walking along, which happened to me in India. Then you feel a bit like this chick trying to ride on its mother's back in the animal nursery:

The hen is a Rhode Island Red. I love her beautiful deep colour (a bit hard to see through that heavy-duty mesh).

There aren't many animals at shows these days. We found some poultry:

And there were a few cows and sheep, and some cats. But most of the showgrounds are taken up with rides and sideshows:

and they are not really my thing.

But I did enjoy the craft pavilion!

Frolic

Bonnie Hunter's mystery this year is called Frolic, and she released her colours last Friday.

Here's her scanned photo of the paint chips:

I don't know how helpful a scan is for those of us who don't have access to the same chips. The colours are going to look very different on different screens.

Today I did a preliminary sort of my stash to see what I might have that could work. Here's what I pulled out, other than the neutrals:

My dark blues are very dark, which I'm happy with. But I think there is not enough contrast between the lighter blues and the aquas, so I may have to rethink those lighter blues and go for something a bit darker. I'd prefer not to buy any new fabric, though. I want this quilt to boost my stash use figures for the year!

So far I haven't looked at the proportions of each colour that Bonnie specified. I would like to swap things around a bit though. For last year's Good Fortune I swapped the warm colours and the cool colours, but for this one I'm a bit puzzled about what would be a good approach. There's still three weeks until it starts, so I suppose there's no hurry to make up my mind.

Shadow

I was fascinated by this shadow as we were driving along, but didn't think to take a photo until it was nearly too late. I managed only one shot just as we were turning the corner for home:

There is a plane that you can't see because of the sun, and that power pole appeared just at the wrong moment. But I don't think I've ever seen the shadow of a contrail before.