Destroying the flowers - but......

turning them into something interesting.

On Tuesday of this week I went along to a new (for me) meeting of a group of ladies who like to do fibre arts and art quilts.  It is an affiliate group of Geelong Quilters Guild which I am a member.  They used to meet on Guild days for an hour before the actual meeting started, but always found this to be quite restrictive if they wanted to work on something or have a workshop.  It was decided to meet on another day so we could have an 'all day session'.

After lots of Show and Tell and ooing and aahing, then lots of chatter about what everyone wanted to do, we did a little bit of experimenting with 'pounding flowers and leaves' onto cloth to get the dye from the plants.

It was very fascinating - seeing how the different plants reacted - some were great others not so.

When I got home I had a little experiment with some of my own flowers.  I actually used a piece of batting, rather than material for my playing.....

This is what I ended up with -

I picked two different types of geranium flowers and a varigated leaf.  Placing the flowers between two pieces of batting I 'pounded' them for a few seconds until the colours came out.

The first one shows the flower colours and shapes when placed face down on the batting.  The second photo shows the batting that was on top of the flowers, in other words showing the back of them.  Notice how the leaf colour comes out much more stronger when the batting is placed on the back and the flower colours come out much better when placed facing down.

I think I'm going to do a lot of more this - and try some other plants that are in my garden (....shush....maybe some interesting ones I find when I go walking around the neighborhood.....)

Note to self - must take secateurs when next I go walking......

A relaxing week at Hall's Gap

A fortnight ago I spent 5 days relaxing, sewing and chatting (not in that order) at a retreat in Hall's Gap, in the Grampian Ranges north of Melbourne.  There were 14 of us altogether. 

Most of us only get together once a year for this special time as we come from all over Victoria and Mt. Gambier in Sth Australia.  It's a fabulous time and the Retreat where we stay backs onto the National Park, and we get a lot of wildlife coming around - this inquisitive Roo thought he was going to join us for morning tea!!!!

I was very pleased with myself as I was able to complete 12 blocks of the pattern 'Patriots in Petticoats', a pattern from Common Threads Quilting.  I adore this pattern as the setting is very different from a lot of other reproduction quilt patterns.

There are 16 blocks of this size (12") plus a larger one in the middle and a border of log cabins set in a ribbon pattern.

The beauty of nature

Recently we have had some rain here on the coast and this has made our grass turn from brown to green - yes, in the hot summer months we grow brown grass.  After some good rain the new grass is green and very much sort after by the local wildlife.

These beauties here are King Parrots - very similar to the Rosella, but larger and brighter red.  The ones with the green heads are the females.  What you see in the background is from the kangaroos that visit at night!!

Even though they are wild they are also very tame when it comes to humans and as you can see Warwick (DS3) is feeding them some native seeds and they are literally eating out of his hand, in fact one is actually standing on his arm.

(my apologies - these are two photos that were deleted - I still haven't found a copy of them)