My piece comes home!

After travelling almost all over the world my piece that I did for the three country challenge (Japan/France/South Africa) has finally come home. There were 30 participants in each country and one from each country was given the same Movie Director to draw inspiration from and to create a piece.  My Movie Director was Alain Resnais who I knew absolutely nothing about.

I chose the movie Hiroshima - mon  amour as It was the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima, movie made by a French Director and the piece made by a South African ,,,,, all the dots connected the three countries.  This challenge took place in 2010..

I have finally finished my Japanese Anemone piece.

I chose the spotty binding as I thought it softened the 'white' of the flowers, however, it 'dances' on the edge of the piece and is quite distracting.  I think a more regular pattern would have been better.  I may revisit this one.

An unexpected break !!

I have managed to get to the sewing machine and finally have been putting the 'Japanese Anenome' piece together which I started a while ago.

The background flower is drawn on as well as the buds with fabric oil pastels. At this point I have also just fused the stems and leaves in place. The stitched flowers are just placed.  How to quilt the background?

After stitching the leaves, buds and stems I used a mix of stippling around the leaves and then I changed to the very open pansy design around the rest of the piece. I now need to stitch in place the flowers and finish them off with hand stitches and beads. Sort of happy - I think this is one that will grow on me once finished.

I was given some young sprouting bulbs by a friend a while ago and they have been doing well. Look what I discovered a couple of days ago ........ one is about to flower, well, actually to my delight I have discovered a few more popping up in the other pot.  I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the plant!

Visitor to the garden

Apologies as he would not stop pecking away at the noo-noos on this dried up piece of palm casing, but what a special treat to see this golden tailed woodpecker foraging amongst  the trees at home yesterday.

Glorious bloom and night time activity

I just have to share the current protea bloom on my young plant.  Although not one of the prettiest varieties I still love it.

While relaxing and enjoying the now cooler evenings (they are quite magnificent) I like to keep my fingers busy.  This is what I am working on at the moment.  A very quick and easy crochet daisy pattern which is joined together when the outer pale olive green surround is done.

I still need to finish off the threads at the back and am a long way off from finishing as I am not sure the size I want it.  

Easter surprise

We had a lovely surprise when my youngest and daughter-in-law decided at the last minute to visit us for this past Easter weekend and instead of hunting for Easter eggs ( really - actually no !) we had live 'bunnies' running around the garden.

Our neighbour across the road has two - this white one and a black.  I think as with most pet rabbits unless you have them in a concreted bottom enclosure they will escape.  They do also have two small dogs so I think they run the gauntlet and come to visit for some peace and quiet.

The final of the three challenges is now finished ..........

....... and I handed in the three yesterday.

Past, present, future

The second challenge for my local guild, movie - The Great Escape, I finished a couple of weeks ago.  The last postings showed a work in progress.

This is the end of the real "Harry" tunnel (on the other side of the road) showing how it does not reach the cover of the trees.

We have been hearing the Kingfishers in the vicinity again and to our delight a pair have returned to nest in the weep holes of the retaining walls of our pool area. What alerted me to them was the on and off tapping on one of our windows only to discover that they can either see themselves in the window of my sewing room or there is some other fascination that makes them fly up to it and tap on the window pane.  

I managed to capture this one from the door entering the room and thru the window pane so not sharp but this is one of our lodgers

And this is the last one of the challenges, song - Rock around the Clock.

Painted, fused and in place to be stitched. You will notice the clock goes backwards!   This was not my intention. I was concentrating so hard and oops!  I left it as my other half gave me the idea of  'going back in time'  which I thought was nice and quirky.

a little bit of this and a little bit of that .....

I have been back into the dye buckets.

One of my local guilds has a Quilt Show coming up in June and we offer mini workshops and demos during the course of the day.  These two pieces are for a Sashiko workshop, hence the blue, and for book covers using the felt flower cut outs that I showed earlier, hence the green and blue fabric.

I have also managed to get to the machine to work on my second challenge, Movies - the Great Escape.  

As you can see ... this is work in progress.  The idea was to keep it quite simple but as usual I have got a bot carried away with my favourite technique - just cannot help it. 

The size is A4  and forms part of the previous challenge I showed earlier - Charlotte's Web which was the 'book' challenge.  The final piece will be 'Song'!