WOW or WIPs 21st March 2018 Red and Green quilt

This is the tiniest frog I have ever seen, he’s not quiet a 1/4 inch long! He is So perfect and not at all worried that my iPad is withen inches of him?

wet and drab day this morning

Giant palm is dropping it’s fruit, in a few days there will be 100s of them and in the wet and high temperatures they ferment quickly and it’s a dreadful smell.

SO I lay sheets of plastic to make it easy to scop them up and dispose of them.

Even the swimming pool looks sad this morning.

But the water Lillie’s are happy.

I tried 2 different fabrics for my stems to be, one on the right  bleed in to the background to much so went for the batik on the left. I have enough of that fabric for all the stems to be. These are all going to be cut on the bias and have iron on fusing behind them.

First half of the stems machine appliquéd down.   To get a mirrow imagine I fold the block in half over a light box and drew with a pencil where these stems were, a perfect imagine .  My light box is my small round glass top table with a light shinning up from the floor LOL

Threads I used on the stems, I want light in the centre of my blocks so using a bright gold thread on all the left hand side of the stems , if I add it to the other side of the stems it looks chunky see top of right stem, so I have used a violet thread that blends in and makes the stem softer.

First stems all appliquéd down, centre flower is just lying there not appliquéd down.

Finally all stems appliquéd down/

Now to iron down my leaves, I had to place ALL the berries so I could place my leaves and not over lap the berries or the berries over lap the leaves?

Appliqueing those leaves down using a aqua fine dress makers sewing machine thread top,   It was chewing the thread and making birds nest at the back till I used the same thread top and bottom, why am I using a dressing making thread instead of applqiue thread?  because it was all I had in aqua LOL

Slowly it grows

For some reason I thought there were leaves on each seam of the blocks also, so added them to see what it was going to look like and to my surprise I see a lovely circle of leaves?   have since checked the original pattern and there are NO leaves on those seams but mine is going to have them LOL   SO not only are my leaves different shape, my circles different sizes, I’m adding more leaves now LOL

All done waiting for the berries, there will be  all most 200 on this block!

Close up on the stitch I used on the veins

To make sure I had the same vein shape I made up 1/2 a leaf in cardboard then it was so quick to mark those veins.

Stitch I used for the veins, on the right is the stitch as programmed in my machine, on the left is the same stitch but only 1/4 of the size it made a wonderful vein stitch

Where I’m up to now, two bunches of needle turned berries hand appliquéd down next bunch waiting to be pinned, and second block has its stems fused down and 1/2 have been machine appliquéd down.

BLock on the right waiting for leaves  to be ironed down?

New leaves such a fragile leaf at this stage .

This heliconia grows wild here now.

Ants love the honey so if you pick them you have to plung the heads in a bucket of water for a while before taking them inside.

This is the strangest plant in my garden, never seen another one any where here?

love this colour.

heres another stunning colour combination?

These are chive flowers so so dainty around 1/8th of and inch across each flower?