Visitors from all over

Last weekend I was joined by lots of botanical visitors for a Botanical Christmas in July. There were botanical friends from Sydney but also from Mareeba and Canberra. Geoff, Jen, Ellen, Rod, Alex and Luke also came as well as Surrey's sister Janice, also part of the botanical crowd. The two long distance couples stayed over as did Alex and Luke. We all had a great time and the weather cleared enough for a tour of the garden and the quilts upstairs.

Of course, the first question from Alex and Luke when they arrived was 'can we sew today?' and I had to delay the activity until Monday. They had been to Spotlight with Ellen who allowed them to choose a fabric each to bring along. They had also decided that they wanted their name letters as cushions just like their T and J cushions (for Thomas the Tank Engine and James, another engine). Below are some photos of the fun we had entertaining our long distance guests on Monday. Sarah took the photos and Marion sewed for the whole afternoon on my second machine. The boys helped draw the patterns for the letters, cut them out, sew them and stuff them. John and Roger chatted during the morning but after a bit of work in the afternoon John was set to the task of helping to stuff the rest of the letters...

It took a lot of hands to hold the letters in place while Ma did the cutting.

Alex is getting quite good at sewing 1/4" from the edge of the fabric.

Luke can now reach the foot pedal on the sewing machine so he was allowed to sew his L with help from Ma.

Each cushion took lots of stuffing.

Eventually the names were complete and we were all exhausted.

After the boys went home Marion, John and I decided that a Baileys was in order in front of a warm heater. We were all quite exhausted trying to get all 8 letters done by the time Ellen arrived for dinner. What a fun activity it was for the first day of the school holidays.

My advice to anyone else doing this activity is to limit it to one letter each per day. It would last longer and the kids can do most of the steps for all of them. But it was great to have a frantic activity when I had the help of Marion and John.