Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring

I don't know why, but I am always amazed at the beauty of Spring. Year after year Spring never fails to delight and astound me. I suppose, because I find Winter rather tedious and ho hum and the long months of dreary and frigid landscapes rather bleak, I wonder if Spring will ever visit these shores once more. Just as I begin to think Winter will last forever, Spring magically appears and begins to dust the landscape with beautiful colour. Down here at the bottom of the world Spring is sprinkling new life and beauty to the landscape. Spring is weaving it's colourful magic with cheery profusion.

In our little plot of earth the Daffodils and Jonquils pop up with cheery abandon. Year after year the Spring bulbs multiply with very little effort from my green-fingered gardener. =)  Every year each bulb gifts me with another and another and another bulb. 'Tis magic really.

Sweet, sweet Maisie......doesn't she adorn the countryside beautifully! She is incorrigible, always ready to smile at the camera.

Whilst Spring has been doing it's thing outside, I have been doing my thing inside. I have been whiling away many Spring moments stitching my hexie flower quilt. Each hexie flower reminds me that Spring kisses the earth with sweet flowers.

I have bordered each flower block with strips of  fabric to give the quilt a scrappy aesthetic.

In each corner I appliqued the smaller hexie flowers onto polka dot fabric.

I was going to applique each small hexie flower onto white fabric but I thought the dotty fabric would add a sense of fun and cheeriness. I love these little hexie flowers. I think the addition of the snippets of embroidered doilies in the middle of each flower adds a touch of whimsy.

The quilt top thus far is the size of the top of a queen bed. Now I have to decide how I will border the quilt. I like the thought of fencing the flowers in with scraps of fabric. I am thinking of incorporating some small hexie flowers; how, I am not quite sure but I am hoping something brilliant will metamorphose. =) I will play around and see what imaginations my muddly brainpan will conjure up.

It is school holiday time down here at the bottom of the world so I am going to spend the next couple of weeks stitching this pretty quilt......amongst enjoying other pastimes. I can see in my crystal ball, the enjoyment of many a country drive through this beautiful Spring paradise, drinking in the glorious sights and scents that Spring always magically gifts us. Tassie in Springtime is truly a sight to behold.

Now that the days are getting longer and becoming warmer I might even find myself in my garden, sitting amongst the Spring bulbs enjoying a cup of tea.

Aah....the beauty of God's masterful brushwork is truly magical!

And......of course pick overflowing baskets of Spring bulbs.

Just playing. =)

Enough of this chatting and playing with pretty flowers, there is a li'l stitching to be done!

Until the next time.........have a beautiful day!

Oh, Sweet Spring!

Down here in this little part of the world the land is awakening with the sounds and scents of Spring. With each day the Spring sun warms the brown earth. The breath of Spring is fragrant with sweet flowers of the Wattle Trees, Jonquils, Daffodils, Weeping blossom trees, Bluebells and Hyacinths. The first colour of Spring down here at the bottom of the world is a sea of yellow. The landscape is bursting with the cheery, yellow blossoms of the Wattle trees.

The Golden Wattle (Acacia Pycnantha) is Australia's national flower. Each Golden Wattle has many large fluffy, yellow, sweet-smelling flower heads where each flower head is a bunch of many tiny flowers. Each flower has five very small petals and these flowers are arranged in dense rounded or elongated clusters which are almost hidden by the long stamens.

With the garden  beginning to sing a gentle Spring song and the flowers beginning to bloom, my 'florist' fingers have been itching to play once again with the flowers that have begun to smile at me. This past little while has found me walking in the garden, gathering a pretty bloom or two and popping them  in an assortment of pretty vessels. As I have intimated before my kind of floral arrangement is popping a flower here and there in an effortless arrangement that pleases my eye. I use the 'florist' title rather loosely as I certainly am not a florist. I am that gal that quickly throws arrangements together in a rather hurriedly and haphazard fashion.

As you know, I am a little obsessed with fashioning still life arrangements of flowers and pretty tablecloths, quilts, fabrics.......or whatever. AND........as it has been a rather bleak and flowerless Winter, I fear the first flush of Spring blooms has made me a li'l giddy with excitement. The first signs of Spring has resulted in me going a li'l overboard with the generating of the odd floral still life or two. So hope you do not mind the 'few' happy snaps that follow. =) Perhaps make yourself a cuppa in a pretty teacup (it'll help pass the time) and enjoy!

As we all know bright and cheery yellow and blue, blue, blue always play ever so nicely together.

Love, love, LOVE the blue and yellow do-si-doh-ing in a happy dance!

Swirls and twirls of beribboned flowers dancing round and round in an embrace of sheer joyousness!

Red and yellow and pink and green, Orange and purple and blue.
I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, I can sing a rainbow too!

Some pretty batik fabric with a sprinkling of Pansies and other sweet pretties.

A watering can of Alstromeria and a quilt or two always makes for a pretty still life. =) Alas the pretty Alstromerias are not from my garden but from the green grocers. What can I say, I could not resist buying a bunch or two.

Oh dear, I did get a little exuberant with my Spring still lifes, didn't I. =) Oh well, such is my life. The arrival of the first flush of Spring flowers is always joyous to me.

If you have gazed upon my happy snaps until the end,  thank you so much. I am quite certain over the next few months me and my little camera will be happily clicking away, trying to capture the beauty of the festival that is sweet Spring. 

Sending you all a little Spring love to your li'l corner of the world. Until the next time...............

Spring is A-Comin!

'Tis Winter......but Spring is a-comin! So very happy about that. Come to think of it I am doing a happy dance. I am happily shooing away Ol' Man Winter round the bend in our country road as I have become rather weary of his frosty and cranky demeanor.

Small evidences that Spring is not far off are happening in this little neck of the woods. The garden has been rather dismal and devoid of colour these past months, but ever so slowly, the Spring bulbs are just beginning to awaken from their deep, wintry sleep and pop up their pretty, little heads to herald that Spring is a-comin.

It seems Spring is a-comin to my sewing room as well. I have been working on my EPP hexies, albeit slowly.  I have been stitching my pretty hexies into blocks of gleeful flowers. As I stitch these blossoms of delight, they do make me smile.

I used apple green and white polka dot fabric for the stems and leaves.

I have also been stitching smaller EPP hexie flowers using 3/4" hexagon papers. For the centres I thought I might use snippets of my lovely embroidered linens.

At the moment imaginations are colliding around in my brainpan as to how the hexie flowers are going to dance on the quilt. I am still playing with the design. I feel it is going to be another bright and happy scrappy quilt. Someday I am going to grow up and join the big girls who fashion quilts that require a lot of  accurate and precision stitching; I really, really will. You know the quilts; the ones that when you look at them, you scratch your head and wonder "how in the world did 'she' make that?????" Come to think of it, my Cathedral Window was a big girl's quilt and I didn't enjoy stitching that one at all. So, perhaps I will just stay in my world of rudimentary quilts and have oodles of fun. =)

Over the next week or so, I will happily sit in my sunny, sewing room and enjoy a little more hand stitching. As Ole Man Winter and his arctic-like sidekick, Jack Frost retreat and journey to those of you whom live way up there, I will dream of happy things.....Spring, warm sunshine, flowers, little birdies singing and pretty, blossom-filled quilts.

Let the birdies sing......"Spring, Spring, Spring"!

Yes indeedy, Spring is A-Comin!