Trunk Full of Quilts

Although I'm no expert in the quilting area, I do love admiring quilts and have made up a few of my own over the years ... all of which were gifts and none of which I have photos (pre-blogging days!). My sister and mother and I have attended various quilt shows over the years and we all admired greatly the precision of sewing and the eye for design that quilters share.

Today I'm joining Soma of Whims and Fancies in an on-line quilt show ... Trunk Full of Quilts! I checked with Soma and she agreed that I could showcase a couple of quilts that my mother-in-law has made for my two kids. My mother-in-law has been making quilts for years and years, and she is a "perfect-points" kind of quilter. You could look over any of the quilts she has made, and the points are exact every single time. She's a perfectionist and does amazing work. My quilts tended to always have a few spots that didn't fit quite right, but I'm a little too lazy to rip them back ;)

She was determined to give each of my kids a quilt made by their grandma. My mother-in-law suffers from arthritis in her hands, and also has had serious back troubles for many years. But she sat down at her sewing machine for all the months required and created these beautiful quilts. My daughter chose her own quilt from a pattern offered in a magazine:

My son didn't choose a specific quilt pattern, but apparently he had discussed it with his grandma and gave her the strict instructions of "not too many flowers"! He was presented with his quilt this past spring:

I like my son's quilt the best. I love these sorts of patterns within patterns in quilts, 

and the colours in this are more to my liking. 

Both beautiful quilts and my kids are very happy with them!

Please visit Whims and Fancies to see what others have contributed

 ... there are some beautiful quilts!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Wendy

PS Sorry I haven't been around to visit much or even to post anything here on my own blog. Things have been going a little haywire these past few weeks and I'm having a tough time juggling all the balls at once. I've read everyone's recent comments, and if I haven't been able to reply to them this time around I apologize. Hopefully you'll see more of me, and me of you, very soon. Thanks for understanding :)

Winter Project

Sunday afternoon ... after a full day of sewing and a few chores (laundry still waiting for me!), I'm finally able to sit down and get a quick post written to join with Jennifer of Thistlebear in her Winter Project link party! Thank you Jennifer for hosting this party.

I've decided to start on the cable cushion cover for my first winter project. I have made two other cushion covers, and my daughter liked them so much that she has requested a knitted cushion for her bedroom. While she was home for reading week in October, we went to the store and she picked out the colour she wanted. The photos don't show the colour well at all, but it is a very pretty dark wine / burgundy in pure wool. 

I started knitting the back of the cushion first in this interesting embossed pattern from a stitch book I have. It's cleverly called "embossed blocks". This is what I have got done so far with a few quiet evenings the last few weeks. I have to keep track of every row in the 20-row pattern repeat, but it's not a difficult pattern to knit. I've only had to rip back to a mistake once so far ;)  (and that was enough!). 

My daughter chose this pattern for the back, and for the front she has chosen the most complicated cable pattern in my book! It's called the "triple twist cable" ... doesn't that sound lovely?! One large triple twist will be in the centre, with two smaller "five rib braid" cables running up the sides. I've sorted out how to incorporate the two different cables, but I'll have to knit on the front with no distractions so that I don't botch it up! I'm actually looking forward to the challenge.

I'm always curious to know what patterns look like on the wrong side. So if you're like me, this is the wrong side of embossed blocks ...

... it kind of looks like cables too! 

Actually, this would make a nice pattern for a blanket 

since the wrong side looks just about as nice as the front :)

Be sure to hop over to Thistlebear to see what others have been working on for their winter projects!

Thanks for stopping by!

Wendy

Another Walk in the Woods

An incorrect camera setting gave me the above photo. I kind of like it, although it does give the impression of snow on the ground ... brrrr! I went for a walk in my nearby conservation area with my husband and the pup. It's a mild but windy day today, and the woods were damp. It's not a very long walk (well, what we did, there is a much longer loop I would have walked if I was on my own), but it was enough to get some fresh air and a bit of exercise for the day.

This is the shot I was going for originally (below) ... quite a bit more colourful wouldn't you say? A lovely beech tree leaning over the path with lots of that coppery goodness still decorating its branches.

Still lots of colour around, but most of the leaves have dropped to the ground now, leaving the trees in their cold bareness for the coming winter months.

I do love the combination of the white and black birches and their golden leaves.

A perfect autumn combination :)

I'll let the trees speak for themselves for the next few shots ...

This is the oak tree I showed in my previous post of my walk in these woods. It's now turned coppery orange in the short space of two weeks, and looking amazing!

today

two weeks ago

The sky was starting to look ominous, and the wind was definitely picking up! We were afraid a storm was brewing, but even now that we're home that hasn't happened.

  This interesting fungus which I photographed last time as well.

This is along my secret path ... not so many people come down this path, so I can let Cody off leash. 

I liked the way the greenery was trickling down the end of this tree stump.

The creek was quite swollen and muddy from our heavy rain earlier this week.

There were a lot of people along the trail today, and almost everyone had their obligatory cup of coffee from Tim Horton's in their hands. Unfortunately, most people that walk into the woods with a coffee don't walk out with the empty cup! The cup is tossed carelessly onto the forest floor. The coffee cups are not biodegradable as there's a plastic lining in the cup to keep them from leaking. So they sit for a long time in the woods without disintegrating and looking quite ugly. When I saw one cup stuffed into the top of a tree stump I at first walked by while my husband and I made comments about how lazy people are by not taking their empty cups with them. But then I walked back and put the cup into a plastic bag I happened to have in my pocket. Twenty cups later!! I had a bag full of coffee cups (all from Tim Horton's) and about 10 bottles and cans. Terrible! 

There were even more cups added after this shot!

I have admired Tammy for her efforts in cleaning up garbage in her city, which seems at times futile. But if no one ever picks this stuff up, our green spaces will look like a garbage dump. On the way out, I stopped and squeezed my full shopping bag of cups into the one and only garbage bin in this park, which is on the way out to the parking lot. On the way back to the parking lot I spied yet another bag of McDonald's garbage, carelessly tossed under a beautiful pine tree. The garbage bin is on the left and the garbage is on the right. You'd think the person would be able to see the garbage bin quite plainly, and maybe they did and were just too lazy to take it there. So annoying.

We passed another couple who each had a cup of coffee in their hands. I was in the process of picking up yet another Tim Horton's coffee cup from under the trees. When I stood up I just had to tell them "Don't throw your cups into the woods when you're finished with them!!". Of course they said they wouldn't with little chuckles, but I wonder if they did. Even though it seems a bit degrading to pick up other people's garbage, I consider these conservation areas to be mine (along with everyone else), and I like to see a clean green space, not a garbage dump. I think when people see that someone else already threw their garbage on the ground, they think it's OK for them to do the same. So I'm hoping that if they see that there isn't any garbage around, they will think twice and maybe take it out with them. 

You carried it in, you can carry it out!

And after that little rant ... have an enjoyable Sunday afternoon :)

Wendy