What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I like the four subdued pieced blocks around the centre. I think they add a lot of interest to the design.

Love the second design … more of the subdued colour blocks!

Australian native Banksia flowers come in quite a few different varieties … this is based on one of them.

I like both of these designs, but if I was going to make either I would probably change something about them. At the moment there are just half a dozen quilt designs in this project file, but that will change once I hit the publish button for this post!

It is raining a bit which means the state flower of South Australia will be growing, and then flowering in dryer areas of the state.

Including Sturt Peas on a quilt is one way to keep them in order … in the wild they are not so tidy,, but are spectacular when in full flower.

I have thought that the background colour of some of these designs is wrong, but then I remember that bush fires leave behind a blackened landscape, which is home to a lot of seeds of plants which start growing after rain, and are soon producing flowers.

Once the flora starts showing their colours, the fauna also come out to enjoy the new growth, including our native hopping mouse which is unrelated to the average mouse, but is part of the marsupial species which thrive in Australia.

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.