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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.

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 ...

In Electric Quilt 8 we can use Pieced Block Designs as quilt layouts, providing only straight lines forming squares and rectangles are used.

The blocks above are the blocks I have chosen from my collection to use with applique block designs in a project Outback Banksias.

When the block is used as quilt layout the blocks can be drafted to fit the size and shape of the block, but I find that adding teh same block everywhere in the setting is the easiest way to have my first look at what happens when square blocks are used in rectangles.

Most ...

Love the combination of subdued pieced blocks and strong contrast applique.

I started playing with custom designs quite a fair while ago, and drew up a lot of pieced blocks with just vertical and horizontal lines to use. This morning I decided to try using one of them to introduce a new collection of blocks.

One of the first problems is that the blocks placed in assorted rectangles get rather distorted, so I spent time to redraw some blocks. Need more practice with this great idea.

I am rather pleased with the second design, though I admit that several versions got deleted along the way.

Pretty pastels in a very traditional style quilt … not the natural colour of Aussie flora, but some of our flowers fade in the sun, just like our fabrics, especially those which hang in windows!

I like the second design.

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 first design does not look like the colours of Australia’s native Sturt Desert Pea, but the shapes are very much like the flowers, and as far as I know this species only comes in red, though there may be some whites ones.

The second design is more like you will find in out back areas. That is the dinkum Aussie colouring.

Happy Australia Day!

Some of our Aussie flora have some weird but very interesting, and attractive, flowers.

Some of them are rarely seen in built up areas but are almost weeds in the bush, some are easy to grow under cultivation, and some of my favourites will not grow for me!

At least I can grow them virtually and in whatever combination I choose.

Today I am sharing two colourways of the same design, first with a slightly off white, light sandy coloured fabric.

The second the background is a total black out!

I love both of them, and I also love the Mitchell Hopping mice which found their way into the designs. I had a close encounter with a hopping mouse during a mouse plaque many years ago.

I had traps set all around the house to catch any, and hopefully every mouse which found it’s way indoors, but rarely saw any mice except in the traps, until one day I wandered ...

I love it!

The background colour is a bit dark in the second design.

Needs to be washed out until it becomes pale grey perhaps.

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.

This project file uses my version of the state flower of South Australia … the Sturt Desert Pea. It is an annual, though the seasons are based on rain rather than calendar months. The plant emerges soon after rain in dry sandy red sand in desert areas, and flowers profusely for a short period, and sprawls along the ground with the flowers sitting above the carpet of soft grey green.

My Mum had a small clump which flowered after a good rain, but I haven’t been able to keep them alive beyond one flowering season, but in my virtual world ...

The shapes are inspired, but the colours are not … the flowers represented in todays designs come in reds, not pink and purple.

The colours are more English cottage garden, and i had a lot of fun playing with the colours, and my hands didn’t get dirty once, unlike the real garden outside.

Only the shapes of the flowers really look like Aussie Bush flowers … I have used faded colours instead of the bright reds and yellows of many of the well known Australian native flowers.

Changed swags in both the swag borders, and the flowers in one, and made some of the flowers fade even more. I wonder if plant breeders are trying to create new varieties of our flowers.

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.

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

Started playing with Aussie flora designs a couple of years ago, then lost them … and found them yesterday after my early morning session playing with Desert Pea designs. There are three project files, with just a few designs in each one, and I will share them today and tomorrow.

The sizes of native Australian flowers varies from small to big, and in the design above the yellow balls of the wattles are usually half an inch or smaller, while the banksias are at least fist size, so these designs do not show them in scale.

The corner blocks in the ...

Australian wild flowers, with the South Australian state emblem in the centre … Sturt’s Desert Pea. The background colour is one of the many associated with the sandy areas of Australian inland.

The second designs features flowers of three Aussie bush shrubs.