Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Real life inspiration for quilts and crafts

This week has been a little hectic here, so there’s been very little sewing time for me. There was a fair bit of secret Christmas crafting, which I am excited to be able to share with you on Thursday, but no quilting. I’ve been creating for the Christmas Ornament Exchange and tutorial blog hop coming up this week…. Stay tuned, it’s going to be huge!

One of the main reasons why it’s been a slow week here is that I went on a two-day camp in the local hills with my young son. This past weekend was the South Australian Hoporee camp at Woodhouse. This camp is the state level Joey Scout adventure that happens only once every two years. A very action-packed weekend for nearly 1,000 people (children, parents and leaders), and one of the highlights of the Joey Scout calendar.

Here’s just a very small  taste of what the Joeys (6&7 year olds) got up to with the support of their parents and Scout Leaders……

All in the midst of the beautiful Adelaide Hills, in amongst the koalas, pobblebonk frogs and kookaburras.

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: English Broom

As well as the ample wildlife (that seemed surprising unperturbed by the sudden influx of 1,000 people), there were also some notable spring flowers about. While we were on a rest break I spotted a medium-sized bush with stunning yellow and red pea flowers…… So I took pictures of that too, thinking it would make an fabulous colour board for Tuesday. Which I hope you will agree, it most certainly does.

But I have to admit that I was also highly disappointed when I did some research yesterday and found out that this plant is an invasive noxious weed in Australia (and according to Wikipedia, also parts of the US, and New Zealand, and India). 

This naughty but beautiful plant is commonly known as English Broom, Scotch Broom or Common Broom. The scientific name is Cytisus scoparius. Most often the flowers are plain yellow…. which well describes the other bushes I saw at the campsite. But there are also several multi-coloured hybrids that have naturalised, and this particular bush was showing off big-time!

I am not sure what I will do with this vivid red, green and yellow colour scheme. I had thought a true-to-life pea flower appliqué would be nice, but the noxious invasive weed thing has taken the shine off that idea. At least for now. In reality, English Broom is not a bad plant – just not welcome here. Perhaps the best place for it is on a quilt or cushion after all! I’ll have to muse over this one for a while.

In the meantime…

Wishing you all a lovely week, and hope to see you back here on Thursday. I will have for you a tutorial on how to make the Christmas tree ornament I dreamed up for my 2017 Ornament Exchange partner. I am paired up with the very talented Evija of the award winning From Evija with Love blog. How lucky am I? Anyway, there will be links to 46 other ornament tutorials from around the world on this hop. All on Thursday! You’ll be sure to find something you will want to make!

P.S. Linking up with Cooking up Quilts, Fiber Tuesday, Freemotion by the River, The Inquiring Quilter, Midweek Makers.