Art Gallery

 Recently we headed to the art gallery to see the Jeffrey Smart exhibition. I did have to google him and find out a bit before I went but it was amazing. His art is very architectural with quite amusing twists in some of the paintings.

I liked this one especially. The corrugated iron is so beautifully painted.

This one was very interesting as it is a portrait of Clive James. Can you spot him??

Botticelli to Van Gogh

 Last week we headed to the National Gallery to see the Botticelli to Van Gogh Exhibition. It was well worth the visit. Here are a few of my favourite paintings.

Art and music

We had a wonderful day out on Tuesday. First we went to the Art Gallery to see the Love and Desire Exhibition. It was amazing and so well worth the visit.

 It was very special to see some William Morris works, both fabric and gorgeous printing that was made by his famous company.

 This is William Morris's only easel painting.

 Lovely to see Michele Hill's beautiful book in the Gallery shop.

We then had a quick lunch at the Portrait Gallery and Ma and I headed to the Seniors concert at Albert Hall. It was wonderful!

Ma and Pa in Canberra

It was so nice to be able to have Ma and Pa visiting this weekend. Pa hadn't been well enough to visit for a while but he has improved and it has been great to see him feeling better and able to do more. They head home today but we have had a very nice time with them. They came down especially to see our kids' houses as they hadn't ever seen them. Ma enjoyed a couple of swims in the pool too.

 Yesterday, Ma and I went to the Renaissance exhibition at the National Gallery. It was very interesting and it is amazing to think the paintings has been done over 400 to 500 years ago. The colours were so bright on many of them.

 We just had to have coffee and cake here and I took the posters as photography wasn't allowed in the exhibition.

 On the way to the coffee shop we saw these amazing angels/space men hanging!

 Last week, I was motivated to start the next block of Scandinavian Christmas. Here is Santa almost appliqued.

 I have started the embroidery. I thought I would be almost finished then bit there is a fair bit of work on the borders!

Beautiful thimble and holder and a visit to the Gallery

Gwen shared this beautiful silver thimble and holder with us on Wednesday. Her dear husband, who is sadly missed, gave her this special gift. It is a very lovely keepsake.

After going to stitching for a short time (and not doing a stitch), I met up with Di and Karen from the Bay for a quick shop, lunch and a visit to the Art Gallery. They were going to the Masterpieces of Paris and as I had already been, I went for a wander in the Gallery. I found this exquisite bed covering which had been beautifully embroidered many years ago. The tiny silk stitches were unbelievable.

It was also very large! I sneakily took these few photos to show you.

Quilts at the Art Gallery

We took Ma and Pa to the art gallery last week to see the McCubbin exhibition. They really enjoyed seeing the lovely paintings and while they looked at that, we wandered around some of the other areas and came across some Australian quilts. It was interesting to see them and so good that quilts are being collected from our short quilting history in Australia. This one was a hexagon quilt.

These were very tiny log cabins. The logs were less that 1/2" wide.

And this blurry one was made with woollen fabrics and was a "wagga", which is a useful quilt usually made from wool suiting fabric.