Favourite Quilts

We're still at the Queen's Bush Quilt Show, which ran for two days, Friday and Saturday.  All the comments have been very positive.  It's been a spectacular success for the local guild.  Here are the viewers' and a few of my own favourite quilts.

This beautiful black and white quilt won 'Viewers' Choice' among the large bed quilts.

 On the other hand, this was my first choice - I just go for the bright colours.

 And this was the 'Viewers' Choice' for wall hangings, a beautiful bargello pattern (3x5).

On the other hand, this was my own favourite among wall hangings (4x3).

An interesting John Willard design in bright colours (about 3x3).

 An unusual circular butterfly (about 4' across).

A very interesting spiral design, with hand-dyed fabrics (about 3x3).

A striking black and white picture of a zebra (2' x 18").

And these are a few more of the full size bed quilts I personally enjoyed (along with lots of others!).

 

Queen's Bush Quilt Show in Markdale

The Queen's Bush Quilt Guild is hosting a big quilt show at the arena in Markdale, and we've been there enjoying it (and working hard - my wife being one of the chief organizers).  Once all the work was done and we could look around at the displays, it was frankly amazing!  It's still on tomorrow, Saturday, so if you live locally, go and see it!

The 'Queen's Bush' was a large part of southern Ontario first opened to settlers in the 1850's, including all of today's Grey and Bruce Counties.  It became home to numerous English, Scots and Irish settlers, as well as a notable group of black settlers following the 'Underground Railway' north to freedom.

The Quilt Show has a little of everything.  It has the Quilters' Challenge, where quilters receive two specific pieces of fabric, and a set of instructions and have to come up with a small quilt.  These are the varied results; the 2nd from right placed 3rd, and the 3rd from right placed 2nd.

And these are the rest.  This is the only group of quilts that are judged (other than viewer's choice for the whole show), and the 3rd quilt from the left came first!

There is a display of vintage quilts, along with an actual bed and antique sewing machines for atmosphere. They disguised the glass around the hockey rink to good effect by displaying quilts.  The quilt in the centre is one of ours.

This old quilt was made either by my grandmother or one of my great aunts; I remember sleeping under it as a child.  It must be at least 70 years old.

There are large wallhangings, with some spectacular designs.

And their are small wallhangings, again with a wide variety of designs.  The one on the left here is by my wife, looks like a bright explosion, and is named after the 'Higgs-Boson particle'.

There's a special dispay of John Willard quilts.  John was a well-known quilt designer and teacher in Ontario who came and ran a workshop for the guild last year.  As you can see, these quilts all came from that workshop.  Sadly John passed away this winter.  That workshop was one of his last.

And of course there's the vendors' aisle, always popular at quilt shows.  What self-respecting quilter would attend a quilt show without buying something!  At least a little fabric or thread if not a new sewing machine!

And capping it all off is the big display of 75+ large quilts hanging in the centre of the room.  A truly remarkable collection of artwork from the small quilting guild here in Markdale.

And my role was to help with set-up.  We arrived to the empty arena early Thursday morning and got prepared for things to start arriving.

Three hours later a crew of 6 men had erected the big frames in the centre of the room, figuring it out as we went along to a great extent.  But they seem to be working very well.

And 4 or 5 hours later, the quilts were hung, diplays and vendors in place, and the formerly empty arena was ready for the finishing touches.  Tomorrow - some of my favourite quilts.

The Summer Season Arrives

I've been making a special effort to watch for significant chanages in the seasons this year.  Seasonal change is continuous, and is especially obvious in a garden, but changes also tend to occur in bunches sometimes.  This is what I'd say happened about two weeks ago, when summer really arrived.

The most obvious change was that the leaves were finally fully out.  The very widespread white ash are the last tree to leaf out here, still looking like the leaves are only half out at the end of May.  But by early June, the leaves were definitely out.  This is a tulip tree we planted in our yard, very far north for this species in Ontario, but so far it has survived.

The other most obvious change is that the last of the crops are in and starting to grow.  Corn, as in this field, and soybeans  are the two most frost sensitive crops, and often don't get in and emerge til early June.  By now, seeding was pretty well complete.

And the first hay was cut too.  I haven't found any big round bales to photograph yet, but it's been rainy and cold for a week too.  This hay was cut the first week of June.  Dairy farmers are often the earliest to cut their hay, wanting a high protein content.

When you look a little closer, you notice other things too.  In our case, the daisies start blooming.  Daisies pop up anyplace they can get started, and usually I let them bloom if they're in the garden.  But they also grow all over our meadow, and suddenly the green grass is decorated with little white flowers.

There are even more yellow flowers than white in the meadow, and they're also just starting to bloom.  These are Hawkweed, or King Devil, but the yellow Buttercups and Goat's Beard are also now in bloom.

Finally, the lilacs started blooming.  They have bloomed quite late here this year, but they are well along now.  So it seems to me like quite a pattern of changes in early June that put together mark the end of the spring season, and the arrival of summer.  With all the leaves out around here, the landscape feels a lot more closed in.

Markdale Quilt Show

Don't Forget!
"Sew Much to See" 

Queen's Bush Quilt Show in Markdale

Markdale Arena

Friday 1-8 p.m.

Saturday 10 - 4 p.m.

Come and support your local Quilter's Guild!

Peonies

The showiest flowers that mark the middle of June in our garden are the peonies.  I included a picture of our largest peony covered in buds with the very first blossom out 8 days ago, here.  You may not have noticed that picture, because the post was mainly about the June arrival of the dreaded mosquitoes!

Here is that peony about 2 days later, absolutely covered in huge blooms with their amazing yellow stamens, and being attacked by all the bees in the neighbourhood.

A close look shows the incredible twisted yellow stamens.  These are all 'single' peonies, with one set of petals around the outside.  Look up 'peony' images on Google, and you'll have a hard time finding a picture of a 'single'; they're all 'doubles' with their many showy petals bunched together which appears to be by far the most common variety of these popular flowers.  But those double blooms that we've bred for show are of very little use to the bees!

On the other hand, our collection of singles was being mobbed by bees - 'here come the troops' this picture says to me.  As I mentioned in the earlier post, these are un-named varieties, the result of a breeding program at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, but the more I understand about them the more I appreciate them.

We have several different ones, all of these 'singles', and the bees were after them all.  A well-known horticulturalist friend once told us: "Don't ever buy a double version of a flower, always buy singles and support the bees".

A close look at the stamens and pistils on this one shows quite remarkable structures and colours!

They're mostly white, but not all of them.  This one is a beautiful soft pink.

And the stamens and pistils in this one are even more remarkable!

This is another of our big peony clumps.  It was hard to find a bloom without a bee foraging in it on this one.

A final look at the biggest peony at its peak of flowering.  By the time the last buds come out, the petals are starting to fall off the first of the flowers.  But they certainly mark mid-June in our garden.

Linking to Our World Tuesday.

June Flowers

As the seasons unfold, there is now a sequence of new flowers blooming in the garden, adding splashes of colour, and making a morning walk with the camera worthwhile.  Here's a selection from this morning.

Poppy

Peony

Wild Geranium (this might be just a weed!)

Iris

Tradescantia

Jacob's Ladder

And this one is a beautiful flower, on a 2 foot tall spike of flowers, but we don't know what it is.  The closest I can come is Anthericum liliago, or St. Bernard's Lily.  Can anyone confirm that, or correct it!?

Another view of it.

This picture of the flower spike might help identify it.

Linking to Macro Monday.

Great Egrets

The Great Egret rookery on Chantry Island was fascinating, and busy with these huge white birds coming and going, flapping in and then settling with folded wings.  Although we see egrets around here sometimes, I had never seen a rookery before, let alone been in the middle of one!

When you see them this close, sitting on a nest rather than fishing or flying, they really do look rather fierce.  They may have to defend these nests from the nearby Cormorants and the many gulls.

The nests were piled up one on top of another in individual trees, and some of the branches in these nests were 6-8 feet long!   There must have been about 50 nests, and 100 adult birds.

A number of the nests had visible chicks who looked like they were reaching a good size - like the two in this nest being guarded by a parent.

We were the very first boat tour of the year, so I expect the birds were feeling disturbed at this new intrusion.  This one looked definitely not pleased to have people so close.  Note the small chick in the nest.

There were hundreds of gulls too, mostly Herring Gulls.  They nest directly on the ground, scraping together a simple nest; their eggs are mottled brown so if the parent is gone, they're not easy to spot.

An adult sitting on eggs.

And a young Herring Gull chick, probably a day or less old.

And there were the Cormorants, far too many of them.  They're a serious nuisance on the Great Lakes.  They nest in trees like the egrets, albeit in smaller nests.  All in all, our trip to Chantry Island was a great success.

I'm linking to 'Saturday's Critters'.