When bad pictures happen to good quilts

For the wife of a photographer, it's pretty embarrassing. While we were at my grandparents in Canada, I only managed a few seconds on the morning of our departure to take pictures of a couple of quilts, and the light in them is bad, as the room is lit like a dentist's office. I'm still a secret blogger as far as my extended family goes, and so was taking pictures on the sly.

The first is my grandfather's sock quilt. For years, my grandmother collected my grandfather's odd or torn socks, then finally sewed them together as quilt squares, backed them with pink flannel (why pink? I will have to ask) and secured it with French knots in red wool. Voila, your perfect, hard-wearing, economical quilt. Do other people make these? I don't know. We used it a lot for picnics on the beach.



The next is a quilt not actually made by my grandmother, but given to her by the daughter of a friend, who was obviously crazy because she didn't want it. My granny took it to a quilt shop one day when they was a some quilt version of the Antiques Roadshow, but they couldn't date it, other than say it is very old.





My mother isn't as actively crafty as my grandmother, but she made a quilt for the baby before she was born.



She was hedging her bets by making it blue and pink, but I think the lace applique is such a girly touch, it gives her preference away. The flowery fabric is from an old shirt of hers, and the image of Notre Dame is from one of her old t-shirts. (She lives in Paris.)

Flicking through a photo album of the quilts my grandmother made during 20 years with her quilting group, I happened upon my quilt, a Dresden plate, with a caption saying it took over 200 hours of hand quilting. That made me feel slightly queasy, as the quilt is folded up in a corner, not being admired, waiting for me to get round to fixing loops on it to hang it up. I'll post pictures soon.