At the front of our property we have been enjoying different plants and shrubs come into bloom during the later spring.

The dogwood tree in the foreground has lovely large cream blooms and is nicely complemented by the lilac bush in the background.

Perfection in Miniature

The other day I was out in the garden and I spotted a beautiful blue bird's egg lying on our front lawn.

It seemed perfect in shape and colour and sad to think it will not bring forth the life within.

We have all sorts of flowers blossoming in the garden at the moment including lots of banksia roses. They are about an inch or less in size so I took a photo of cluster of the roses with the egg so that others can share in this little piece of perfection as well.

Teddy Bear Quilt

We are not sure how she does it, but Debbie from our quilting group, now known as 'Sweet Peas' has been producing an amazing amount of quilts.

Not only that, but she has discovered that she can do her own machine quilting and so she is able to bring them to a lovely finish.

She shared this lovely Teddy Bear quilt with us this week. Kaiser gave it his tick of approval by giving the quilt a 'cat scan'.

Napkin Ring

My sister and I can't resist buying old linen and giving it a new life.

We enjoy using embroidered tablecloths and cloth napkins in our everyday life at meal times.

I decided I would like to make my own napkin ring but it has been a long time in the making. Today I used it for the first time.











I took a piece of pale pink 100% cotton, backed it with pellon and quilters muslin and then did some free motion embroidery along the length of fabric.

I did 2 x stem stitch irregular lines, then I added silk ribbon leaf stitch using 4mm green silk ribbon.

Finally I added french knot flowers using variegated rayon thread.
When embellishing was done I made a
tube by adding another piece of quilters muslin and stitching down both sides of the block and then turning the item out to hide the raw edges.

I cut a piece of timtex slightly smaller than the block and slid this in behind the embroidered block.

The timtex was to give the napkin ring some firmness.

I turned under the edges at one end and then bent the whole piece around, slipped the raw edges of the other end inside the folded end and slip stitched the ends together to make the ring.

Spring one day, winter the next

Yesterday, at our place was picture perfect. Clear skies and mountains on view. Temperatures were summer like.

Today, clouds, cold and rain - what a contrast.

Still, the garden gives us joy, proving, in spite of the contrasts in the weather, that spring is truly with us.

We have pansies and violas planted in the garden near our front door. They have rewarded us over the past few weeks with their abundance of blooms and happy faces.

The shrubs have been flowering as well and the waratah's bloom is quite majestic and a pleasure to observe. Their season will soon be over so we are enjoying while we can.

Adopted Great Great Grandmother?

Our friend, Debbie, has just recently become a grandmother for the first time and yesterday she brought her three week old grandson to visit with us.

Long time since any of us had seen a three week old baby and with this picture of our 91 year old Mum holding him, I thought she could almost be his 'adopted' great-great grandmother.

More Food - Yum!

One of the lovely things that has been established in our vegetable garden is rhubarb.

Linda has been making a lovely rhubarb pie for years from the Alison Holst Kitchen Diary Volume 2.

It is a real treat - orange juice is part of the secret of the delicious taste in the filling.

The latticing of the pie crust is all part of the taste treat and once again we were not disappointed.

Served with custard, we could not have asked for better.

Alison Holst is a household name in New Zealand. You can find out more about her on her website and one of her best all time recipes for lazy lasagne can be found there:-

http://www.holst.co.nz/Recipes

Our Quilting Group

Yesterday our quilting group met again and it was a very pleasant time.

Again there was show and tell so we have some images to share from the creativity of the ladies in our group:-



Debbie had another lovely nursery quilt to show us.

Not only that, she had also progressed to free motion quilting and had done a great job of this.












Linda showed the group a scrappy quilt she had made so that she could experiment with a new machine quilting technique.

After she completed it she realised it was quite 'conversational' with all the different prints that were included and so it is destined to become an 'I Spy' quilt for some nephews of ours.




















Andreena loves all things Christmassy and brought some completed Christmas projects - a Santa Bag and a Christmas Tree Skirt:-

A Little Bit of Real Gardening

Today was more about real gardening and not the fabric creations of yesterday.

With spring in the air, beans, peas, tomatoes and lettuces have been planted.

Linda and I noticed some pretty pink flowers in the garden and on closer inspection we discovered it was clematis.

It was trailing along the ground, so with a little bit of attention it has now been tied to retaining wall and as it has lots of buds we expect to see a lovely display in the coming weeks.

The soft pink petals and fine yellow stamens are almost enough to inspire one to a little bit of silk ribbon embroidery, but not yet.

Where we live we are having the most beautiful burst of spring weather.

After a month or so of wet, wet and more wet it is so nice to have the warmth of the sun and evidence of spring in all that is growing in our garden.

There was a time when the only gardening I did was on fabric and one of the advantages of that is that no weeds grow there.

Nothing quite like real flowers though, but I did enjoy browsing through some of my crazy quilting items today and this image is one of my favourite fabric gardens.

Nothing Quite Like Homemade

Linda and I do a fortnightly menu planner to coincide with our supermarket shopping and every second fortnight pizza is on the menu.

Today was the day - it was excellent - and there was not a crumb left by the time the three of us had finished.

A glass or two of red wine finished it off nicely.

Already looking forward to the next one.