Finished is a good feeling!

At last "Black and White Rag" is done. Started in July 2006, left as a top for a few years, then quilted in September 2011. The sense of relief when the last stitch was taken last night was great.

The back.....the scrumptious orange fabric (one of the Marble Mates range, by Moda - don't know if it's still available) wasn't quite wide enough, hence the strip of black and white fabric.
A close-up of one of the corners showing the quilting. The quilting design is from New Zealand Quilter magazine, Issue 63. The design is called Patiki and is based on a Maori kowhaiwhai design.
A Big Decision was needed on how to turn the corner, because the design in the magazine didn't show a corner. The design is made of four separate lines which meant four separate rows of quilting around the border; just well it's not a huge quilt. It seemed fitting to use a New Zealand design because the quilt was first started in a class by New Zealand quilter, Donna Ward. My family also has a connection with NZ, as my maternal grandmother was born there; she emigrated to Australia with her family when she was only three years old.

It was going to be a very artistic photo session in the garden, but the wind sprang up and it's starting to rain.....not ideal conditions for taking a good photo, so we have to settle for draping the quilt over the furniture in the beer garden. Every time we think winter has well and truly gone it comes snapping at our heels again, just to let us know it hasn't quite departed. Hopefully our new plants won't fare too badly. I spoke to them this morning and they assured me they were looking forward to some rain, and would be just fine.

Just as well the neighbours weren't around at the time.

Having learnt last spring to identify certain weeds, I am trying to keep them under control this year. But the neighbour on one side isn't, because they are seldom home; today I noticed a healthy lush crop of bright green sticky weed in their garden which abuts onto ours along the boundary between the two gardens. I am not impressed. The sticky weed will go to seed soon and it will be back where I don't want it. That family moved to the house last January but is already putting the house on the market again, so perhaps whoever buys it will keep the aforementioned sticky weed under control. We can live in hope.......the neighbours (who are a nice enough family) have several horses, so are looking at buying a farm out in the country somewhere as they currently have to pay rent for the horses as well as the mortgage on their house. I don't know why they didn't think of that a year ago.

"What should we think of one who had invented flowers, supposing that, before him, flowers were unknown? Would he not be regarded as the opener-up of a paradise of new delight? Should we not hail the inventor as a genius, as a god? And yet those lovely offsprings of the earth have been speaking to man from the first dawn of his existence until now, telling him of the goodness and wisdom of the Creative Power, which bid the earth bring forth, not only that which was useful as a food, but also flowers, the bright consummate flowers, to clothe it in beauty and joy?"

Perhaps so.......but I don't think I shall hail the inventor of sticky weed, if it's all the same with you. The Victorians were masters of the florid phrase, weren't they?

Enjoy your days!