Winter bugs and Spring gardens

Nothing says spring to me like the beautiful kowhai tree and this is the baby, self seeded version - far too close to the edge of the flower bed but it's in a quiet corner so it will stay.

The blossoms almost look too big for the branches and the tuis have left them alone......

Winter bugs, well I've had a doozey which is why I have been unusually quiet  - but the upside is that my 'charity' dollars will be going to the Wellington Free Ambulance......  and my grateful thanks to my wonderful family and friends  ..........

And I can take this opportunity to share some of my garden type quilts because the five inch squares I collected for many years comprised many, many floral fabrics.

This one is the block called Exquisite [I think] and the method is so simple, each five inch square needs two two and a half inch squares of a contrasting fabric which are placed on opposite corners and, using the sew and flip technique, give the shape needed -

Never one to waste an opportunity, I then sewed a second seam a scant half inch away towards the corner and so made a small half square triangle, ready for another project.

You can see the line drawn - and probably that the top right small square has slipped a little - I recommend straightening that if it happens to you!












So here's the top that resulted -

  It's a little squiffy on the design board but you can see that I attempted to put flowers of similar colourings together and then reversed the greens and florals to make a 'border'.

Even managed to get a butterfly in the garden!

Having made this top, you can imagine I had a large number of small half square triangles, so I started playing with them in nines.  Any one of these little blocks could be duplicated and then rearranged by turning on one corner, or putting in rows - all the same orientation or alternated etc. etc.

There's a row of arrowheads, or a loch ness monster - spin it on one corner for a larger block.......

And the same for this one, so many possibilities with half square triangles!!

I found another block, called Maze, where you use three half square triangles in a row, put a light fabric on one side and a dark on the other.  Well I had greens and florals, so I adapted the pattern to make this top -

Very busy but then that's what a spring garden is - you can see the detail here -

and here -

This evening I shall settle down with a glass of red wine [now I am no longer taking antibiotics!] and have a good read of the blogs I have missed lately.  I also missed going into the prison for the last three weeks - never happened before, so I shall be way behind there but looking forward to catching up next Saturday.

How appropriate is this quote for today, "There are never enough 'I love yous' by Lenny Bruce or I thank you - that's my thought!   So a big thank you and I love you to my family and good friends.....

Nice talking to you
June