Switzerland

We spent a week in Switzerland, in the French-speaking region near Geneva. Here I am at Lake Geneva and also beside the large Flower Clock in the Jardin Anglais (English Garden). We had flown overnight from Bangkok and couldn't checkin until after 3pm. We spent a pleasant morning wandering around Geneva.

We stayed in a little alpine village, Leysin, which is about 90 mins train journey from Geneva and is 1300m above sea level. This is part of the panoramic view from the balcony of our apartment. Little bits of snow on the highest peaks (hidden often by clouds)

This is one of the traditional swiss buildins in Leysin - there were many like this. Just about everyone had beautiful window boxes full of geraniums. The village is a ski resort in winter and a hikers paradise in summer. To get down into the main village from our apartment was quite a steep walk. There was a free bus that went around the village, but we never used it. I had very sore calves the first few days walking up and down steps and steep slopes!

Bangkok

We're now 2 weeks into our overseas holiday. First we went to Bangkok, spending only 2 days there. We flew in at 6am on the Thursday and flew out to Switzerland at 11.30pm on the Friday.

The traffic in Bangkok is crazy - here is Col on one of the pedestrian overpasses. WH&S is almost non-existant - we could walk straight across railway lines, with no barriers. Workmen would have open pits in the middle of the footpath with no warning.. Fun! Did manage to do some shopping though! very cheap. :-)

Beautiful night sky from our hotel window. Great hotel - had a tailor in the foyer, so I ordered a 3 piece suit (jacket, trousers, skirt) to be handmade. It was finished on Friday before we left, though we got them to post it home, so we didn't have to lug it around the world for 5 weeks. Fabric is cashmere/silk - grey with fine pink pinstripe.

We did a tour of the Grand Palace and a couple of temples on Friday morning - absolutely amazing buildings. Some statues are covered in gold leaf, which gets replaced periodically at great cost. In the Grand Palace, we saw the blackboard used by Anna (as depicted in the movie The King and I)

QAYG

Quilt-as-you-go. I've used this technique, as found in a number of web sites.

This quilt is made of scraps left from a couple of recent quilts. It went together very quickly - certainly easy to do!

Long time UFO

Medallion Quilt

This quilt was started about 10 years ago, when I was a new quilter AND when blue & yellow bedrooms were the "in" colours. I really wanted to try Broderie Perse (appliquing pre-printed flowers) and just had to put the basket of flowers and the four surrounding posies together.

Then I knew I wanted to the do the square in a square border... but got stuck after that.

I had seen the ribbon border and wanted to do that further out, but how to increase the quilt to that size. And, oh no, I didn't have any more of the cream homespun. Spotlight didn't have any more of that colour and so I was a bit stuck. I put together the ribbon border and attached it after the square in a square border... yuk! Not what I'd pictured - it really needed a cream border in between.

The quilt sat for years, until I found more of the cream homespun. So on went the ribbon border.... then what. I dídn't have enough of any of the fabrics for an outside border... :-(

So it sat for another couple of years. Until earlier this year, there was a call for quilts after the Victorian bushfires. That 'fired'me up - I took the quilt top to a fabric shop and selected the outer border fabric, binding and backing. Now it is complete and I really like it. Though I can really see the change in workmanship over the years, particularly in the cut off points in the square in a square blocks. So now it's ready to go to Victoria - I hope it brings some happiness to someone.