Out and about in Ballarat

While I had a lovely time teaching at Quilt at the Winter School last week, the organisers thought it would a good idea to give everyone an afternoon off. Most of us went shopping and one of the most popular destinations was Gail's Patchwork Emporium in Sebastopol. Doesn't it have a lovely old fashioned name?
Gail's shop is attached to her house and a couple of years ago tragedy struck when the entire place burned down. Gail and her husband have rebuilt the premises exactly as it was and it is beautiful.

Gail has so much beautiful fabric and threads and gifts for sale that it is hard to choose what to buy because you really want everything. Everyone was leaving with these beautiful pink and white bags filled with goodies.

You can see that I find it hard to resist batik fabrics.

One of the big tourist attractions in Ballarat is Sovereign Hill. It is done up as an authentic Gold Rush town in the 1870's and at the moment they are having a Christmas in July promotion. All the shops have Christmas decorations and it is really beautiful. Every so often it snows and it is very realistic looking and quite magical.

On the way home from Ballarat I went to look at Lake Wendouree, which is a large man-made lake that is famous for its black swans. I wanted to see it again because when I last saw it about four years ago we were in the middle of a drought and it was completely empty.

We have had plenty of rain since and it is at its beautiful best.

Lake Wendouree

I also dropped into Mill Rose Cottage on the way home. It is a lovely patchwork shop in Ballan not far out from Ballarat. Of course I found something to buy there as well. Can you guess which colour fabrics I am thinking of working with next? I won't be able to show any progress shots though because it is for a birthday present and you never know she might see it and it will spoil the surprise.

 

 

Well, my time at Ballarat has come and gone and I have at last packed everything away. I don't have any teaching commitments for a while and I am really looking forward to being home and starting a couple more quilts. It has been such a busy first half of the year for me and I seemed to be always rushing from one deadline to another. It will be good to slow down a bit.

Happy sewing,
Linda