In My Garden

This is the quilt on my home page. It has a pieced white on white background - a system I also used in the Memories of Kakadu quilt - and machine appliqued flowers. I was drawn to this pattern because of the lovely contrasts and because nearly all the plants are replicated somewhere in my garden. When I was quilting this, their was a fantail that kept coming to the window and catching insects against the glass so I quilted a little fantail into the background of this quilt

Working in a range of green shades meant the cyclamen flowers really pop at the bottom centre.

I would still like to make a quilt on a similar manner on “Visitors to My Garden” celebrating the diverse bird life we experience on an ongoing basis - the joys of having a large garden, close to town but away from the main road. Sometimes , like when the tomatoes are ripening, I think thee are too many birds but at this time of the year we get a different set of visitors - sometimes migrating herons or paradise ducks. There is a mother mallard duck who hatches her brood each year in the pond to the north of us and then takes her babies across our property to Brooke Park each day so they can hide from the hawks. She hardly loses a single duckling and they start with her shepherding them along as fluffy bundles and end with a row of almost adult ducks. Then there is the keruru (wood pigeon) who comes to get water. He sits in the tree, watchful, to make sure the tui are not around to chase him away. Tui are quite aggressive birds. The tui abound in the flowering cherry in the Spring. If we get a dry Summer the pukeko come for water from the bird bath. They are incredibly noisy and keep jumping up onto the carport roof. Fantails are friendly little critters that often accompany me around the garden as I disturb minute insects that they catch on the wing. The little Californian quail are also noisy for their size - they fly straight up like a helicopter, chattering at full speed. Each year we also have a couple of pheasants that nest in the bush area behind the house. The cock pheasant will take off with a great flutter giving me quite a scare. And then there are the more usual visitors - thrush, blackbirds, sparrows finches and white eyes. I might even include some rabbits that sneak in to try and steal my vegetable seedlings. Lass loves to chase them but she isn’t fast enough to catch them.

Don’t you think that would make a delightful quilt. Time is the problem and I must finish my Diploma course before I start anything new.