Blocks and Gardens.....

Last week I think us Twba Tuesday Girls set a record and got 8 of our blocks sewn.....

Quite a good effort considering all those tiny half square triangles....

and so my quilt is growing.... 36/196 blocks.... this will be a huge quilt I think.  I'll see how my fabric goes - not sure I have enough of this range so I might do another one with half the blocks..

It is the season for our annual Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers and Hubz and I went to visit a few of the gardens this weekend....

This one won the country garden section - we enjoy a trip out bush so it was perfect.  Although the countryside is so so brown and dry there was this delightful little oasis full of colour...  

Another little block for the No Fuss Stitch-a-long has been sewn....

The Grand Champion garden is not far from where we live and in a smallish block in suburbia is this one full of Australian Natives.... they were really doing their spring thing and the birds just loved it....  Amazing how many plants they managed to fit into the space.

We definitely want to do more of these plants in our garden.... 

Dutch Treat blocks are coming along - I do one in between some of the other more relaxing stitcheries....

all those little pips were a bit of a challenge....

The last place we visited was an Historic home where both the homestead and the gardens had been opened.  It was not a competition garden so it was lovely that they let us go and have a mooch around.

Harrow house was another bush drive which is always lovely.... again very dry farmland around it

Karen over in the USA with family who are helping people affected by the latest Hurricane is collecting blocks for an auction to help an agency which took in pets during the hurricane to keep them safe.  It's her birthday coming up and she wanted some doggy blocks....

I made the middle one first but didn't think the contrast was good but I will send it anyway....

The blocks are pretty cute and provided free from Sew Fresh Quilts ....

Righto, Gotto Go.... Monday and grown up life is back ........

.... the Carnival is over.....

The main focus of the carnival is the flowers and gardens, but there are other great activities that happen and last Tuesday was spent with lovely friends visiting some of my favourite ones..

A new one to me is a quilt show that features a guest quilt artist, this year was Val Benson, someone I had not met before this year but she is well known in the area for her work, which is varied and beautifully made...

This exhibition is held at a lovely old homestead Queenslander, now housed at one of the local girls boarding school and kept for events such as this....

I was thrilled to see this pretty hexagon quilt at the entrance....

Val had let me play with it earlier in the year.... I wanted to highlight the pattern so I went around the hexagons... some with feathers, and others in a web kind of look...

... and edged the border with informal feathers....

Another quilt I did for her was this wedding ring quilt pattern...

... great fun to do designs in the plain spaces and loops in the  curved piecing blocks....

The school is on the top of the range and we went over the road to a park to look at the lovely view... as you can see it was a beautiful spring day...

... after all that eye candy we needed our Devonshire teas.....

this favourite tea room annual visit is always decorated with fun aprons and tea towels.... and legs...

.. inside the hall is the teapot extravaganza... so many different tea pots, big and small, classy and crass, silver, porcelain, tin .... all sorts and of course beautiful tea cups and saucers...

... we then went over to the Toowoomba Quilters quilt show... I didn't take many pics here but this is an overall picture of the hall....  of course there are much visited Traders as well and a lovely time of chatting, viewing, shopping and more tea....

So much work for this two weeks of carnival and so much buzz in the city.  I love it.  Great show Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers... see you next year...

Righto, Gotto Go....