A weekend away ......

We are very lucky to live relatively close to a beautiful hilly area of rainforest - it is about 1 1/2hrs easy country drive to the Bunya Mountains...  

Saturday morning I was up earlier than the others so sat outside in  the sun taking in the view....

.. with my coffee and stitching....

The Bunya Mountains is so called for the wonderful Bunya Tree which stands out in the forests with it's unique shape.  It's a magestic tree....

There are lovely natural forests ... with tall trees, vines and ferns....

The area is a nature reserve and wallabies and kangaroos abound (scuse the pun!) .... they are so fun to sit and watch....

... Widget enjoyed the bird feeding times.....  this is a King Parrot at his tray....

... the ferns were doing their spring thing and I loved the red contrast in the forest beds...

We went for a couple of lovely long walks..... with amazing views of course....

The native orchids were flowering and on rock faces it was lovely to see these huge clumps of yellow...

these are friendly Crimson Rosella's ....

The mountains are cooler ... so wood fires were enjoyed in the evenings... with toasted marshmallows of course!

On Monday when we left it was raining... this mum wallaby came and sheltered under the bunya pine outside our cottage with her bub in the pouch....

I did very little sewing but I did finish this block I started there when I got home.  It is one from The Splendid Sampler called Dedication Rose (designed by Lisa Bongean from Primitive Gatherings)

Righto, Gotto Go..... it's a whole week into October already!  phew....

.... 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....

Carnival Time....

This time of year out nearest city (we live about 20km outside Toowoomba, Queensland) has it's annual Spring Carnival of Flowers... I always love to go to some of the many things on show.  The gardens are a feature of course, but there are also some other girlie/sewing/tea type things to enjoy too!

Outside the city winning garden.....

outside the city winning garden...

Inside a church - beautiful floral stain glass windows...

one of the windows....

In the church hall was the orchid show....

tiny delicate orchids....

and brighter bigger ones too....

winning rural garden.... 

... and another....

... and another....

Laurel Bank park tulips are always gorgeous....

... more tulips....

... they have live music there ....

a winning garden with a man made waterfall...

... we just fitted in the winning native garden too... it was lovely and my picture does not do it justice...

... and the next day we went to Geham school crafts market... where I treated myself to a scented wax burner and was given some lovely scented wax's as a gift...

It really is a fun time .....

Righto, Gotto Go - more pictures to sort out....

Sewing.... sewing... quilting... gardening...

At the weekend I was lucky enough to win a lucky door number prize (there are always heaps and it's so fun).  This glasses case was made by Steph from The Quilters Angel under Me & Leigh Creations....  her work is just lovely and I have bought a few gifts from her over the years....

I have been lucky enough to be quite busy with quilting... it's other people's quilts so I'm not showing them off here...  I still do my own handwork at night  and here is another 4 of the Dutch Treat blocks.... as you can see they are all so different....

Dear Shez had a birthday this month and we always trade gifties at this time ....  I didn't realise until too late that it was an extra special birthday she was celebrating but I did put this bag together for her and fill it with a few goodies....  I think it's always nice to have a little pampering and Shez is doing a bit of travelling around so hopefully this will be of some use....

Sylvia's Bridal Sampler has been a bit neglected and I had been meaning to put some borders on the sides to square up the shape a bit...

 I cut up a whole bunch of 2 1/2" squares in coloured and background fabrics and sewed these together...

.  then just added these strips to the two sides....

... now I can truly say the top of this quilt is finished....

I got rather keen with organising the leftover fabric (I was sick and tired of them being all over the place as they have been for the last year) and cut up some 10" squares, 5" squares and 2.5" squares...  I wish I would do this more often instead of a pile of odd bits...

One of the best things in the first year of a new home is discovering what is in the garden...

We have a hedge of this port wine magnolia... the scent in the evening is like port wine jelly - almost too sweet to be there for too long.... It is just covered in blooms...

I have quite a few clivia, which we split and moved to fill up some gaps when we got here... it's lovely to see the two colours  - so bright and cheerful...

we were given a wisteria so it was our first planting and it has had it's first flowers this year.  I'm sure it will do lots of growing this year now it has settled....

I do love the bunches and they have a lovely delicate scent...

This is the one I had in my last house.... it was just amazing and what I am hoping the fence will look like in a few years....

Righto, Gotto Go... I want to prepare some more Dutch Treat blocks today...

I hope you have a lovely day doing something you love