Another sunflower from our old garden, this time with a few bugs. Maybe I should have named this blog Nicola's flowers!

Day after the party daisies.

Did you feel that rumble then http://www.geonet.org.nz/x2593170g_l.html. I had just dropped off to sleep and was gently shaken awake again. A good end to the day we had our house warming and welcome to New Zealand party.

These daisies are on the quilt from our bed. It is getting a bit faded now and needs replaced soon. The daisies were created using a machine applique technique. Good old freezer paper is used to make each petal, then they are applied to the background by machining around the edge with a zigzag stitch in invisible thread. The freezer paper is then removed by cutting away the background.

No daisies today as far to wet. Just a pic of our flooded creek, and it is still raining. Glad our house sits at the top of a very steep bank!

Future Project

The next project I would like to start is a quilt for my almost 16 year old son. I would like to do one based on a Denyse Schmidt quilt.

Here is the link
http://www.dsquilts.com/co_2tone.html.

The pic is my first trial of the pattern using scraps to make a quilting bag.

A scottish sunflower to cheer up a very wet evening.

Another daisy from the garden. I think this is a weed in some people's eyes, but not in mine. We have loads of these all around the house.

Another view from the bottom of our garden. This time over the creek looking up at next doors paddock.

Buffy investigating the ducks.

She stayed well back from the ducks swimming in the creek at the bottom of the garden.

The camellia outside my bedroom window has just started to flower.

A couple of daisies from our lawn.

The views from the end of our street

Unfortunately we live at the bottom of the street without the view.

Today's daisy

Ok I know technically it is an Osteospermum (I hope). For the purposes of this blog a daisy is anything with the daisy shape, which includes sunflowers.
This one lives on our drive way.

Buffy the blonde cat, blonde in appearance and blonde in nature. She likes to investigate the garden with me.

The end of our garden this morning, with a bright blue winter sky, after the rain stopped.

Chicken and Sunflower Quilt

I love Chickens and I love Sunflowers, so I have been collecting loads of Chicken and Sunflower fabrics for my fabric stash. This pattern seemed a good way to use them up. I am quite into squares at the moment and would like to use the same pattern for a larger quilt, this one is just a lap quilt size.

Napier Rose Quilt
This quilt was started to use up a charm pack of 1 1/2 inch squares that my mum gave me. It had been lying around in my sewing basket for years. As usual with my quilts it kind of grew organically from there and I ended up using up loads of scraps and having to buy fabric to finish it off. It is based loosley on a Kaffe Fasset pattern. Originally I was going to machine quilt it, but there were problems and I could not stop the back from slideing around no matter how many safety pins I used. So it is my first hand quilted large quilt. The design inspiration for the quilting came from Rennie McIntosh's Glasgow rose and the stain glass roses of Louis Hay, who was one of the art deco architects that rebuilt Napier after the earthquake.

This is yesterday's completed project. A patchwork fridge. Our old white fridge was looking a little battered so I have given it a new lease of life with a few flowers. Much better than a boring old white fridge.

Another daisy from my garden, this one is a little past its best (just like me).

And a picture of the mountains with snow from yesterday. If you look very carefully you can spot mount Ruapehu, one of the few active volcanoes in New Zealand) way in the distance looking like a fluffy white cloud.