What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I love banksia shrubs, and so do our native birds, and I am loving playing with the banksia blocks.

I would love to have a garden big enough to plant heaps of Banksias, along with lots of other Aussie native plants, but at least I can design virtual quilts with masses of Aussie plants.

Pieced blocks for the background spaces, with Bottlebrush designs on plain blocks … I like it.

I like the first design, but the second one is my favourite today.

Happy Australia Day!

Sturt’s Desert Pea is the state flower of South Australia. It is a ground cover which grows to cover wide areas of the desert in Central Australia after infrequent rainfalls. A small patch grew in the in the back yard at Mum’s, but I have not been able to grow them as I have lived in areas with a wide variety of sand and clay soils, but not the right one for these plants.

After a good rain in central Australian desert areas they cover wide areas of seemingly infertile soil with a carpet of ...

Sturt Desert Peas grow in deserts, and appear after rain to form a mat of foliage with the red flowers sitting well above the foliage. I have had them grow in my garden once, though my Mother had them grow every year in a bit of dirt held in place with an old tyre. We were not allowed to play in that little patch of dirt so just as well we had a whole farm to play in!

Love the second design … a garden bed I can only dream about!

I love this mixture of pieced background filling in spaces around applique blocks.

I love the second design!

The state flower of South Australia has been placed under some control in the block designs used in this project file.

The plant in reality sprawls over sandy ground after rain, but here they are regimental in their layout.

I love the second design.

I wish I could grow them in reality, rather then just create virtual formal designs. I have tried several times, but have failed every time, though my Mum had a patch of them which came up year after year.

It has been a weird summer, but in the last twenty four hours we have had enough rain to wash some of the dust off, and maybe in the not too distant future Sturt Desert Peas will appear.

In the meantime I can play with some designs featuring one of our most striking native flowers. In my designs I can control a plant which naturally sprawls over the ground like a soft green and bright red carpet.

Aussie florals are anything but formal, but I have a lot of fun using them in formal designs. I don’t bother trying to prune them into formal shapes in the real world!

Love the second design!

Love the centre block.

Love the colouring of the second design. It looks a bit dust, just like an Aussie summer!

The colouring for the designs is based on how the Sturt Pea grows in nature, though I have made the green much greener, it is more sage in nature, but the flowers and the dirt they grow in are close to nature.

My favourite of these two is the second one.

Love this design, but at this time of the year I do not particularly like wattles as they are in flower … and get up my nose so that I am frequently sneezing!

Not that I can blame the two varieties depicted in the above designs, as they do not grow in this area of the country, but their cousins are doing their job well.

No waratahs, lots of wattle. In these designs the wattle is Drummonds Wattle.

Interesting flowers which would look good in many other colours, but as far as I know the real thing only comes in one colour.

Tis the season for sneezes … wattles are flowering in force around Australia at the moment, reminding us of why our national colours are green and gold.

I love the first design, but it looks more like a tablecloth than a bed quilt to me. Lots of room for quilting.

The second design is more like a bed quilt … wattle still features, but without the sneezes.

The Sturt Desert Pea is an unusual flower, but makes for interesting formal arrangements which only vaguely resemble how the flower is seen in the wild.

I like both of these designs, and am thinking about more ways to arrange the flowers, including a less formal arrangement.

Our state’s floral emblem, though it doesn’t form neat and tidy patterns as I have arranged them in these virtual quilts.

Love the second design!

May be able to share a photo of a real flower later today!

Interesting, but very formal arrangements of the Sturt Desert Pea.

Here is a link to some photos of the real thing.

Unfortunately, they are not the easiest plants to grow in the home garden … I put in some seeds and have a little patch smothered in easy to identify weeds … no desert peas! Before I try again I am going to find some pre-emergence spray so that I will be able to see any strange plants coming up.

I love Sturt Desert Peas, but I keep wanting to change the background to green … but am trying to resist because these flowers bloom in the desert! I suspect that I am going to change it one day, as even the desert looks green for a short space of time after rain.

Wish me luck … today I am going to plant some Sturt Desert Pea seeds and am hoping I have inherited my Mum’s green fingers, as she had these come up in a small area of dirt in an old car tyre for many years when I was ...

The first design should be called Wattles and Gum nuts, but I liked it too much to just leave it in an unused project file, just because it doesn’t fir the file title.

The second one fits the title, and I love it.

A reminder to me … plant those seeds soon! Need to find a rather dry corner of the garden.

Memories of home include Sturt Desert Peas near the back door every year!

If all else fails I might have to make a wall hanging to bring out each spring.

Now I think of it, a few days ago I was thinking that we need another quilt or two for our bed. This year there has been lots of days with scattered showers … not the sort of weather to wash even one of our two quilts as it has also been very ...

I love the title of this project file, but the quilts do not live up to the title. The one above is judt wattles, and two of the less common ones at that.

The second design features wattle and waratahs along with gum blossoms.

The last one has wattles and gum nuts, so I am giving up on this project file, as I have other project files which feature all these, plus a heap of other Aussie native flora.Wattles and Waratahs