The Long Weekend

It's Labour Weekend here in New Zealand, the first public holiday after winter, so it's much anticipated. Traditionally, there is bad weather for Labour Weekend, but that's not coming till tomorrow.

Today I felt like doing some Blended dyeing, and it's saturated reds (with a bit of yellow thrown in) that I'm doing today. Fortunately, there was only 5 metres on the roll....otherwise I'd have kept going.
I did the dyeing to take a break from taming the wilderness - some parts of my garden are NOT cultivated. I started out the back, where I plant the vegetables and fruiting plants. The clumps of grass were over knee-high so it's quite hard work when you're unfit. Like me.
These are 2 bags of early potatoes (Jersey Benne, if you're interested), so that I can have new potatoes for Christmas.

It's cherry blossom time!

This one is an upright tree...
..while the new one in the middle of the lawn is a weeping cherry. There are a number of beautiful weeping cherries that I see in Rangiora, and I decided I had to have one. I will plant other things underneath this one to make a feature garden.
I am still in love with these bags. This one is made from pastel hand-dyed fabric screenprinted with my tree design. I really like the colours .
The reverse of this is in strips - same fabric, different colourways. This will be the inside although the bags are fully reversible.

After returning from the quilting retreat, I was in a bag mood. I made this bag, which goes together in a really strange way...
..but produces a lovely reversible bag. Yes, these are the same bag. I made the little pockets from the triangles I cut off at the top when sewing the sides together - I told you it was strange.

The dogs have been clipped, so when it's cold - our spring can be very changeable - they head for the flokati rug in front of the fire.

Look! A blog post!

Yes I have been a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad blogger - but I've had nothing to blog about. Yesterday, however, I spent the day with the Lyttelton Quilters at Glentui Meadows, a country lodge in North Canterbury. Here are some photos from the day:
Sue-Ellen made this lovely bag from a partly embroidered doily and some hand -dyed fabric that didn't come out right. The combination worked brilliantly. It's partly completed in the photo. I loved the pattern, so will make some bags this way.
Here's Sue-Ellen (who won't thank me for the butt view - sorry), Donna and Aileen working hard on their projects.
I rotary cut, sewed, cut again, and made the various sections of my quilt. Heres' where I laid it all out on the floor to see how it would look together. The colour is not right in the big picture.
This is better - the light colour around the centre squares is a mauve colour. Click on the photo to get a better look - a lot of the fabric detail is lost unless you can see it closer. The feature fabric is Hoffman's "Feathers" - in the centre of the blocks, and the outside border.