Life before Felting

Before I learnt to felt, I quilted amongst other things. When I first started quilting I would look at all the lovely pastel quilts and think I would love to make quilts in those colours. But every quilt I have made has been in vibrant colours. This large quilt was no exception. I started making this without checking the measurements of the finished piece. As you can see it is "HUGE". It's hanging in front of a single car garage door. The quilt pattern was designed by Ami Hillege and Michelle Steele. It was very easy to follow and is machine pieced, machine quilted, I stipple quilted most of it, and hand appliqued the animals using blanket stitch. It's great for using lots of scraps. There is an emu at the top of the tree that you can't see very well, and the borders are filled with smaller animals, along the top there are wombats, down the right side there are geckos, and along the bottom there are numbats.
I have added some better photos as the first one is not very good.
This one is 2 pink galahs and 3 jabirus ( a type of Australian stork).
Oh, the pattern also includes an Aussie version of the song, 12 days of Christmas. The applique templates were great. Not difficult at all. I hadn't done much hand applique when I started this, of course by the time I had finished I never wanted to do anymore. Joking... ....I think.
This quilt has all the most recognisable iconic Australian animals, and some that will not be easily identified by overseas friends.

I love the kookaburras they seriously sit around like this in real life.
They are up in the branches, laughing away, looking for all
the world like they are having a chat and a joke. They like to eat snakes amongst other things.
I once went out to breakfast with some friends on the deck of a resort. We had the amusing company of a large kookaburra, that we all duly admired, whilst he sat on the back of a vacant chair at our table. Let me tell you that up close and personal those beaks are quite intimidating.
We were having a lovely breakfast of eggs, sausages, bacon etc. When the kookaburra must have decided the sausages looked a lot like worms or snakes. He did a little hop into the air and landed square in the middle of my friend's breakfast, expertly speared a sausage and flew off. Needless to say drinks, condiments and plates went everywhere. The moral of this story is don't eat breakfast with kookaburras.

Below are platypuses
(or platypi, whatever takes your fancy)
Very unusual Australian creatures.
The poem is by Australian legend,
A.B Paterson.
This really describes what they are like.

OLD MAN PLATYPUS

Far from the trouble and toil of town,
Where the reed beds sweep and shiver,
Look at a fragment of velvet brown --
Old Man Platypus drifting down,
Drifting along the river.

And he plays and dives in the river bends
In a style that is most elusive;
With few relations and fewer friends,
For Old Man Platypus descends
From a family most exclusive.

He shares his burrow beneath the bank
With his wife and his son and daughter
At the roots of the reeds and the grasses rank;
And the bubbles show where our hero sank
To its entrance under water.

Safe in their burrow below the falls
They live in a world of wonder,
Where no one visits and no one calls,
They sleep like little brown billiard balls
With their beaks tucked neatly under.

And he talks in a deep unfriendly growl
As he goes on his journey lonely;
For he's no relation to fish nor fowl,
Nor to bird nor beast, nor to horned owl;
In fact, he's the one and only!

A.B.Paterson