Scorching Summer Sewing

This week our little city of Adelaide has been blessed with some really hot weather, one of the joys of living in Adelaide in the summer!  We have had 40+ degrees celcius temps all week, yesterday it was 45, today its forecast to be 46 so I've been out early, done my weekly shop, library visit and am home in the airconditioning where I will remain unless something unexpected comes up!  

For those still on the Fahrenheit scale 46 degrees is 114.8. Last time I looked we had made it to just under 44 just before noon and given that the hottest temps are usually around 3pm in the afternoon I think you can safely say we'll get there today, particularly as there is quite a strong, hot northerly wind blowing now - Yuck! Our record in Adelaide is 46.1 from around 75 years ago so we might give that a run for its money.

These are classic conditions for nasty bushfires and as there were already some active early around the state this morning, I really hope no further ones are started and that our Country Fire Service personnel can stay safe and cool at home instead of melting outside.(Luckily we live in the suburbs so no fire threat for us)  If you've never experienced these sort of temperatures its very similar to walking out into an oven and it really takes your breath away once the temperature gets over around 43. Fortunately we do have a very dry heat so there is 0 humidity but that's about the only good thing I can say for it!

So what do you do when you can't go outside for fear of spontaneously combusting? You sew of course! One of my projects for January was to help Kristy at QuietPlay by testing one of her new paper pieced patterns before she puts it out there on Craftsy.  Kristy is the queen of paper piecing and has some amazing patterns available on Craftsy, some for purchase but many are free, including some great LEGO ones.  She also currently has a BOM happening at the moment called Sew Kitschy. You can download each month's pattern free that month so you might want to check that out!

So, onto the block.  Here is the front page of the Kookaburra pattern.  

Here is my test drive of the pattern:

It would definitely have looked better with a plain background but other than black or white I really don't have a lot of solids. Maybe I need to sort that out!  I chose this fabric for the background as it also has birds on it so at least he won't get lonely!  I have also discovered a lack of brown and black prints in my stash!

In case you aren't from Australia and aren't aware of kookaburras, they are a type of kingfisher and are lovely birds with a very distinctive call (you might like this Youtube clip of a couple calling).  This is a photo we took of one a couple of years ago (he's looking at something on the ground that looked tasty I think!).

Oh I realised too that I haven't shared the lovely blocks I received from my QBSA partners for January. Coral (a new member) sent me this one:

My second partner was Karen and she sent this block:

Ooops I really should have given that one a press before I took the photo there! I have seven blocks so far and its amazing to see how each block has a different look to it according to the scraps that people have used.

Well, that's it for me, hope I don't melt before the day is done and that the power stays on all day as they sometimes do rolling blackouts to spread the load. Fingers crossed!

Thanks for stopping by,