September happenings

What a busy month September has proven to be, DH and I are busy planning our big adventure for next year, where Paducah, Kentucy will be  another thing ticked of my bucket list. I am busy attending quilts shows, flower festivals and finishing a number of UFO's. Enough to keep me out of mischief.

At present in Sydney, there are a couple of quilt exhibitions on at present, one in the Manly regional Gallery and another in Gymea,in the Hazelhurst Gallery, both are great and well worth a look. Manly has an exhibition of quilts from the collection of Annette Gero, this is a great collection of wartime quilts, mainly made from military uniforms, lapels, wool and intricate hand work. Photos were allowed to be taken for personal use only and not for social media.

Manly Regional Gallery

 Hazlehurst Gallery has a great collection of early Australian made quilts, no photos were allowed to be taken, I did manage to purchase the book, called "Labours of Love", which has photos of the quilts exhibited. Hazlehurst gallery is a great place to visit and have lunch. The quilts mainly from late 1800's were hand pieced or EPP. I have just completed one similar to one of the quilts on display, a quilt made with fussy cut shapes to make a hexagon.The quilt made by Fredriricka Mary Josephine was the inspiration for the Springwood quilt show raffle quilt in 2012, varied slightly with a centre reproduction panel, The quilt was called "Homage"

My finished version of FMJ quilt.

Another quite large quilt, measuring 2.97 mrts by 2.47mtrs. 

Entrance to Hazelhurst Gallery

Cafe and eating area.

 The year 2015 has proven to be a very productive year for me in finishing UFO's and making a couple of quick quilts for gifts to give to family. I have also dabbled into some Zen doodling, which has proven to be quiet therapeutic and created some cushions. Adult colouring books are quite the rage these days, a wonderful way to bring a little calm into very stressed lives.

I am in the midst of setting up a sewing area, rearranging my fabrics so that it can be a bit easier to find my fabrics when commencing another project, as I have so much fabric, I have set myself an amazing task. Whilst doing some tidying up, it is time to purge and get rid of some fabric as well. Windsor Downs annual garage sale is on the 14 th November, so the perfect opportunity arose to have a big clean up.

In the middle ofSeptember, 

 I took the opportunity to fly to Toowoomba to visit my sister and enjoy the festivities with "Carnival of flowers". The carnival celebrates a whole week of flowers, garden competitions, quilt shows, teapot extravaganza, clivia shows and craft demonstrations. My sister and I had a great time attending all the events that the carnival f flowers had to offer.

I will share with you a couple of quilts from the three shows we visited.

Aptly named "Cathederal Windows" all hexagons.

Susan Smith design" Stonefield"

 I had a wonderful time with my sister, touring gardens, visiting three quilt shows, teapot display and arts and craft at Geham.

The Geeham school hall where the arts and crafts display was held.

Me in the grand champion garden in Twoowoomba

My sister Esme, being a wonderful companion and holding her sisters purchases, interesting, seeing I bought a lot of plants and will be flying home .

Well this post has been in the making for awhile, got kinda busy with spring cleaning etc, now we are well into October, time to get a move on.

I will leave you with a photo of my adorable grandson.

Marysville and Black Saturday

With the recent arrival of the new royal baby, from the news bulletins, I have noticed that a number of references have been made about Prince William and when he visited Australia, especially after the Black Saturday fires and how compassionate he was at the time and  likened to his mother who also demonstrated  genuine compassion.  The Black Saturday fires occurred Feb 7th 2009, and devastated nearly all of the Yarra ranges National parks and into the Dandenong's in Victoria. The townships of Marysville, Buxton, Taggerty and Narbethong were totally wiped out, other towns were also affected as well. The reason for mentioning this is that I was fortunate enough to visit Marysville on my 30th wedding anniversary in December 2008. A friend in Perth sent me some gorgeous photo's of this magical garden in Marysville with the most amazing sculptures, set amongst the back drop of a natural wonderland and it was the work of one man " Bruno". As my hubby and I always do something special for our anniversary, I was insistent that we visit Marysville and now in hindsight, we were very fortunate to have visited, and the surrounding area's before it was devastated by the Black Saturday fires. We spent a wonderful three days touring Healesville, Narbethong, Taggerty and Buxton. Marysville is a 90 minute drive from Melbourne and I recommend that you visit. Since the Black Saturday fires, Bruno's new Gallery has been built and opened in November 2011. He is still rebuilding the gardens. Visit the link. www.brunos.com 

What also reminded me of Bruno's art garden, is this image above. This is one of my most favourite sculptures from Bruno's garden. Last week I was having lunch with my friend Sandy and after dining we went shopping.. as you do!. In Windsor a small historical town where we both live, has some very quaint shops, we stumbled across a boutique that was having a sale and had reduced some great clothes. I purchased 2 dresses to wear with tights and Sandy bought about 5 outfits for the cost of one. What Sandy bought that I was very jealous of was  a jacket with the above image all over the back of the jacket, we had a little dispute over the jacket, I lost because it looked so much better on her as well, than me and she also saw it first. That is the best thing about our friendship as well, there is no hard feelings, when either of us lose, we both just move onto the next item, as we both have similar tastes and like the same things, this is a regular occurrence.

Entry to Bruno's Art Sculpture Garden

One of the sculptures in the front garden in a café ... Marysville..

Garden's

I have just returned from a trip to South America and on our return, the garden was quite overgrown and needed some attention. As I work fulltime and live on 1 1/4 acres and have an established garden. I have the help of a gardener, who has been working quite hard to do  a general tidy up. We have also had a healthy amount of rain in the last few months, so everything has got out of control. Amazing what removal of a few weeds and trimming of trees, can achieve.

 

 

My mother-in-law who is 89 years old had a hip replacement last Friday and apart from being confused came through the operation quite well. Hubby will be going to visit tomorrow as she has been discharged after eight days and is now at home. On each visit I make a jam tart for her.  Mum loves this tart and used to make it herself, but now no longer cooks, so now it is my role to keep on the family tradition. The tart has my homemade plum jam and is dusted with icing sugar as well.