posted by Lily on family

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Abigail’s birthday was pretty as a picture – and a lovely day to boot!

[ party favours for the guests - we filled asian takeaway boxes with lollies, Abby provided the art work for the sides, and I found these dear little metal brooches of birds at a giftwrapping store - they looked straight from the 1950s ]

The lucky girl began celebrating on the Saturday evening before the big day, when we took 5 of her friends to dinner at her favourite Japanese restaurant in Southbank, followed by ice cream from a nearby parlour, and then a riotous game of chase in the twinkling gardens.  (Southbank is truly one of Brisbane’s gems – a huge public parkland right on the river across from the CBD where there are fabulous gardens, bikeways, a beach with adjoining lagoons for swimming, great restaurants and cafes, a cinema, the Conservatorium of Music, the College of Art, the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, the State Museum, State Library, Queensland Art Gallery, Museum of Modern Art, and Science Museum.  Abby wants to live there.)

[ the day after - completely engrossed with a lovely set of watercolours, paper and equipment her friend Rachel gave her. ]

The morning of her birthday, I staggered blearily out of bed at 5am and set up the front porch for the birthday breakfast.  After a strong coffee, a hot pancake pan and lots of sweeping, I was bright-eyed and eager and the porch looked very sweet.  Abby graciously stayed in bed ’til all was ready ;-)

We now have a new birthday table cloth – made from a gorgeous French linen I found at the Brisbane Fabric Market – 145cm wide and only 2.8 metres left – needless to say, it all came home with me.  I appliqued a birthday sun onto the middle using left over bunting triangles and a large “circle” of cupcake fabric.  The pieced ribbon border is also appliqued on and the edges of the cloth are bound with the leftover fabrics, quilt-style.

There’s the bunting – we have six pretty metres – the top of the bunting is bound in one of my favourite ever purples. It has served as the backing of Abby’s Bears Paw Quilt, a Korean style Christmas dress for Abby when she was 8, and is in many of our scrap quilts.  I just keep on pulling it out of the drawer – there shall be a moment of sadness when there’s none left, but I shall just be able to pop my head around a corner and see some at work.

And here’s the birthday bag – also from the same French linen, with an A from my French Alphabet cross stitch book, and trimmed with bobbles. If you look closely you will see they are still PINNED on (the sewing machine would have made too much noise the night before!) – the lady at the Fabric market showed me how to take two different coloured rows of bobbles and lay them on top of each other so as to have alternating colours – cool huh!  I have birthday bags cut out in the same linen for Julian and I and have even cut some out of a wonderfully thick white cotton with a French-styled red stripe for Christmas bags.  They are immensely satisfying to make – quick and easy – I made 40 one year for the Prep and Year 1 classes at school.  I was a wee bit sick of them by then.  But I am ever so tickled with this one.  And so was Abby :-) It stayed on the chair for a week and was used to store all manner of things.  In fact, I have been working on another use for it – stay tuned!

Aren’t there some gorgeous cards on the market – from the same store where I found the metal birds in the new David Jones shopping centre in the city.  And there’s a bit of a closeup of the birthday sun.

After a lovely and happy breakfast – I am so blessed to have Abigail, she is a dear girl – the best company, witty, thoughtful and appreciative – the birthday went to school accompanied by 24 raspberry and chocolate tarts.  

So that was Abigail’s birthday – and after a wee bit more sewing, we will have the Boot Family’s birthday setting – I like that whole Steiner/Waldorf approach where you create special traditions for your family. Makes life so very magical and there’s always something to look forward to a lovely ritual to take part in, year after year.  Must be something to do with that Catholic upbringing … :-0