BRISBANE QUILT SHOW 2012 - PART 1

It's time for the annual Brisbane Quilt Show again so a few friends and I made our annual visit.
We enjoyed a stroll around the many stalls admiring the huge variety of hand crafts available, mouths open in wonderment at the talented women and the fantastic products of their labours.

Next it was off to lunch at a cafe down the street a little
then back to view the quilts.

At the entrance there was a collection of themed red and white quilts for one of the competitions.



There was an amazing variety of designs to be seen - all in red and white.



The next section was another competition - textile art with some brilliant entries like the ones below.


 

Then there were a couple involving crazy patch with embellishments that were pretty spectacular.

 

I particularly liked this one - large hexigons in jewel colours set in a black background

Very pretty.

Then we moved on to the bigger quilts.

There were so many I can only show you a few
.
 I was very taken with these ones- very modern in design - and made up of very small pieces.
 

Very cleverly planned and put together don't you think?

This was my absolute favourite for the whole show.
A striking quilt in red, white and black

once again made up of tiny, but not uniform sized,  pieces

There seemed to be quite a few lovely quilts made with these tiny pieces this year

I can't even imagine how you go about planning a striking design like this.

and can you believe this one below is a log cabin design? 

 

Look closely. The centre of the log cabin is a tiny, tiny square....

but the curves in the quilting blur the staircase effect of the log cabin.

As one lady standing near me as I marvelled at these said to me:

"Makes you proud to be a woman, doesn't it, to realise how clever women are?"


I have more to show you next time.

Cheers.

 

 

PLANS

We've been busy buying tickets on one of these.......



so we can plan a holiday starting here...,

then travel south-east to here for a week, ..............

 

to visit old, old villages like this one.... 

and after that move north to spend a week here, ..... 

 

 on this beautiful lake
and in this lovely old town, .......

then further north to finish with a week here ....
 

 

so we can visit some of these.




Lots of planning and research to do until May next year.

Six months !!!!

Can't wait.

Cheers.

PS. Since I haven't been there yet I pinched these photos from the internet. Next year I hope to have some of my own to show you !

NOT DASH- ING AROUND

No, poor old Dash is not feeling the best at the moment.

 

 

She's had a growth removed from her eyelid and is feeling very sorry for herself.

 

 

 

She'll be wearing this gadget for the next two weeks.

 

Negotiating the furniture with this on your head is not easy.

( and having your big ears all squashed makes you quite deaf too !!)

 

 

 

Let's hope she's happy to do lots of this till she's better.

 

Cheers.

FINALLY SOME SEWING

It's been quite a while since I blogged about sewing.

In fact it's been quite a while since I did any sewing

but recently I attended a workshop on Foundation Paper Piecing that I've been wanting to do forever.

Late last year I read a post on this lovely blog about making little houses - a challenge where quilters worldwide were making little houses.

The aim was to make one every day for a year, then sew them into a quilt.

Well I didn't want to make a whole quilt but I did want to learn how to make the dear little houses.

So here's my first attempt at paper piecing a little house.

It's six inches square

Originally I thought I would make a whole lot of these as pot holders to use for Christmas presents but I'll have to see if I can do this on my own again first!!

I might have been a bit ambitious?????

Cheers.

TOOWOOMBA ROAD TRIP

After yesterday's shocking weather (35 degrees C and a howling hot wind ) today was much cooler ( about 25C) so we set off on a short road trip to Toowoomba, about an hour's drive west of Brisbane.



It's a two lane highway most of the way and a pleasant drive.

At first we passed through open fields.



There's plenty of grass cover after the good rains we have had over the past two years but with no rain now for 75 days all is dry and brown.

 

Next we passed through the fertile crop growing area around Gatton.

Flat ploughed fields stretch off to the distance ready for potatoes, beetroot, beans, melons,onions and pumpkins.

Nice to see a few of these. I think they are left for wild life habitat.

 

These huge sprinklers provide irrigation for the newly planted crops.

Further on we are back to scrub.

Lots of dry grass. You can see why there is a lot of concern about bushfires this year

and talk about controlled burning off has already begun.

How's this for a typical Australian vista ?

As usual we encountered huge trucks along the way - most with double trailers fully loaded

and travelling fast..... faster than we were ....

 and passing us at speeds over 100kph even though they are not supposed to be able to go that fast !!

It happened several times - very scary !!
(pity they don't stay over in the left lane like they do in the UK !)
 

From the flat plain we climbed up the range to lovely Toowoomba the "Garden City" and though yesterday's hot wind has cut short the spring flowers, the trees made a lovely green tunnel.
 

 

Business done, a quick bite was in order so we visited our favourite Cafe Valetta.
 

 

where we shared a Club sandwich ( dieting !!!) and a delightful coffee .....

 

before heading back down the range towards home.

 

Beats working !!!

Cheers.