May-be I spent some time in the Garden

I started to write to a friend recently and my opening lines were....

"Just come back in from looking at all the weeds growing where I spent all last week pulling them out.... it is like the new ones are saying "Thanks for giving us some room to grow".

Humph - sounds like an opening line for a Blog Post!"

I don't think I have finished writing to my friend yet - more distractions, like the weeds mentioned above!

They ARE relentless and these ones have itty-bitty bulbs attached to their roots making them impossible to remove completely.

I have been happy with my little potted garden - everything is growing well and the White Cabbage Butterfly has been thrilled to find my Tatsoi.....  Ah the joys of a Butterfly friendly garden.

And Mother's Day flowers have joined in the party as well.

The local Bees are enjoying one of the Chrysanthemums and not the other - so Colour is everything!

And then there was our poor Lemon Tree.

Looks good in this photo but has been the subject of much attention from a young friend who is an Entomologist .

It is heavily infested with Citrus Gall Wasp and needs to come out. 

We didn't realise just how big it was and how much ugly it was hiding!

Now I have a bucket full of Lemons and some serious cleaning up to do!

Whatever happened to May?

I wish I could say I have been SO busy Quilting that I haven't come up for air in a whole month - but actually - I keep getting distracted!


I started the month by Testing out the Scan-n-cut for some possible STENCIL projects.

Here I am using one of Esther Aliu's "Fantasy Flower" stencil patterns that I downloaded a while ago.

The clear line drawing scanned well with just a few tweaks needed to clean up some stray lines and text.

In a matter of minutes I had a precise Freezer Paper stencil cut - in both Negative and Positive.

Seeing it was a test, why not use both?

A word of warning - always adjust your blade depth to suit the thickness of what you are cutting or you may end up cutting a (repairable yet irritating) hole in your mat.

It took longer to find the Fabric Stencil Paint than it did to cut these out!

I think that this was a success and all up (shopping for paint excluded) it took a morning.

***

Once your pattern is saved you can cut out as many copies as needed for your project - enlarge or reduce the size of the Stencil without having to re-scan it!

AND - don't just stop at Stencils... Cut out some Applique too!