Australian landscape

Today is Australia Day, and appropriately I've been working on and Australian landscape quilt. Below is the bottom half of the quilt, which I pieced a few weeks ago. It's 84in wide and 40in high.

I started cutting out the intricate appliques, silhouettes of eucalypts and other Australian bush plants while watching the final stage of the Tour Down Under in our beautiful city.

By the time they were done, it was onto the cricket, also in Adelaide today. There's nothing better than listening to the cricket on the radio; it's the sound of summer.

Here are the most of the appliques. The tallest tree is almost 26in.

Next it's time to join the sky to the background and start fusing the trees.

Oh, and speaking of Australian, have a look at yesterday's visitor:

From where I'd been on the sofa, it was about 1m from me; it was right in the corner of the patio, climbing up the lattice and trying to get out. Cocoa, sitting on the back of the sofa of course, started barking at it, which set off Shadow. I went out with the camera and was about 2m away for this photo. Then I opened the gate. It eventually figured the way out, then went to climb a tree near our shed – but it’s a stump only about 2m tall. So it climbed back down and went around near the front door (at some speed) and tried climbing a post supporting some lattice-work and an arch on the front path. Foiled again! Then across some garden beds, down the driveway, and up a native frangipani. It sat up there a short while, but that obviously wasn’t satisfactory either, so it made its way back down, out the driveway, across the road (under my supervision!) and to a clump of big eucalypts.