On the weekend we went for a drive in the country.  It was a lovely day, not like winter at all, and I decided it would be better spent out in the fresh air rather than locked inside working. 

\We visited a little seaside town not far away, which has an antique place I've wanted to see for a while.  It's one of those shops so full of things that it's difficult to move around in, which is just the sort of place I like.  It was every bit as interesting as I thought it would be, but there was an added bonus in the quilts that were on display.

  Unfortunately, there was so little room that I couldn't unfold these beauties to hav e a proper look at them. 

It's so nice to see antique quilts up close, something that we don't often get to do in Australia. 

I loved the fabrics in this kaleidoscope quilt,

some of them have been reprinted as reproductions and are already in my stash.  I could spend all day examining this one.

This quilt was made entirely of ties, and in a strange co-incidence another quilt like this showed up on a blog I read the very next day.  It's an interesting way to use the whole tie, and the quilt was very heavy and textured,  it felt quite luxurious.  The owner of the shop made this quilt. and she said it was very quick to do, just weaving the ties together and some straightline quilting to hold it all together.  People come up with good ideas all the time.

Another strange thing in this shop was the baby grand piano, painted green with raised Oriental motifs. 

The odd thing is that I have photos of it on my computer, so I recognised it straight away. 

Four years ago a friend took Mereth to an old Post Office in a little ghost town not far away, to see the incredible piano that was in pieces in one of the rooms. 

She sent the photos to me, and wondered how on earth such an exotic musical instrument ended up in a ruined building in an abandoned town.  I was able to go home on Sunday and tell her the next chapter of that piano's story, and how it's being renovated to it's former glory.