License to Quilt

I've been quilting for about 15 years now and I only just got my license.(s)

While in Ontario last month I participated in the Row by Row Experience Shop Hop. It is a summer long shop hop taking place in the U.S. and Ontario. Many of the shops had personalized fabric license plates made for the Hop with a catchy message as well as their shop name on it.
Each shop drafted a pattern for a row of a quilt and the pattern is free for the asking. The only stipulation is that you have to pick it up in person. Not by mail, or email or getting a friend to get your copy. The theme was Four Seasons.
You can read about the details and check out some of the shop plates HERE

I am making progress on my Jumping Jacks quilt. I finished the 7th and prepped 3 more for tomorrow.

BLOCK 7

3 more waiting in the wings.

I would like a little input though. What do you think of the grey floral? Would it be a good choice for one of the remaining blocks?

I made my batch of blueberry muffins and I am sharing the recipe in case anyone is interested.
I took a basic Blueberry Muffin recipe and changed a few things and added a glaze.

LEMON GLAZED BLUEBERRY MUFFINS

1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup white sugar
Stir these dry ingredients together and add 1 cup of blueberries, fresh or frozen
Set aside.
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup of lemon yogurt

Mix well. I usually add all these wet ingredients into a mason jar or my Tupperware gravy shaker bottle and give it a good shake.

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour the wet in. Stir just enough to moisten all the flour etc. Over mixing makes tough muffins.
Bake at 400 for about 20 minutes in greased muffin pans. Recipe says it makes 12 but I prefer to get 9 or 10 larger ones.

Lemon glaze
I squeeze the juice of a lemon in a bowl. Add the grated rind and then add enough icing sugar to make it the consistency of honey.
When the muffins come out of the oven I dunk the tops of the muffins in the glaze once or twice. Let them cool and then drizzle more of the glaze over cooled muffins.

I purchased a movie on itunes today to watch while I was sewing. I had seen it before but I am a sucker for Katherine Hepburn and even though her part was small it was thoroughly enjoyable. The movie is called Love Affair, staring Warren Beatty and Annette Benning with a small part by Kate. It is a third time remake of a movie Love Affaire(1939) and An Affair to Remember (1957) a story about two high-profile types both engaged to be married to other people, meet and fall in love during a business trip. They want to go back to their respective fiancees to end things properly and if they still feel the same about each other, the have agreed to meet at a certain date and time...
Although I have seen both versions from 1957 and 1994, I totally enjoyed it again today. If you like chick flicks , i think you will love this one!

Have Quilter Will Travel

Monday mornings some of the ladies in the community gather around a quilting frame to hand quilt. I try to attend every chance I get. It is a great social time and I can pick up hand quilting tips, everything from marking the quilt to attaching the quilt to the frame. There is always the possibility that all the chairs around the frame are filled up so. I usually bring something to work on as my backup. I have also been trying to add some exercise into my daily routine.
It is a little over 2km to the Community Centre where the quilting takes place, so I decided I would like to bike there BUT the project I had planned to bring is a double quilt I am hand quilting. I am at a bit of a standstill because I need to mark more quilting lines. Well let's see...I do have saddlebags on my bike so just maybe I can get everything packed in them.
1 double quilt ✔️
1 sewing kit with thread, needles, thimble, finger cots and scissors ✔️
1 marking pen ✔️
1 zippered pouch(for show and tell)✔️
1 quilted handbag(also show and tell)✔️
1 6x24 ruler for marking lines ✔️
1 travel cup filled with my fave coffee ✔️
1 bottle of cold juice ✔️
1 little purse with I.D. And money ✔️

That was easy!
I had a lovely couple hours chatting, quilting and sipping coffee, AND I got my exercise in as well! (Can you see my 6 x 24" ruler sticking out of my saddle bags?)

After lunch Mr. O. invited me out on a date...to pick blueberries! He is such a smooth talker how could I refuse. We picked today as well and all in all our 2 picking sessions netted us about 4.5 gallons of lovely wild blueberries.

We arrived home at 5pm giving me just 2 hours to make supper, bake a batch of lemon glazed blueberry muffins, get a shower, wash and curl my hair and get dressed for an evening out with a different bunch of gals for "game night". There are a dozen or so of us that gather to play Scrabble or Sequence once a week, and
I needed to bring a treat to share, hence the muffins. I have to say they were a big hit and several of the gals asked for the recipe. I plan on making another batch tomorrow and I will share the recipe for those of you who are interested.
Tonight Mr. O and I cleaned berries for several hours, but they are picked over, washed and bagged ready for freezing.

Can you see that little green worm that hitched a ride home with us? Just another good reason to clean and wash the berries!

We did up 8 large freezer bags filled with berries today and 6 last week! Muffins, loaf cakes, blueberry pancakes, pies...mmm!
I plan on trying a new recipe on Sunday for Blueberry Shortcake. It really does sound yummy and if it is a success I will share that recipe as well.

T-t-t-thats all folks!

In the still of the night...

It's late. Mr O. is sleeping and I know you will probably find this hard to believe, but I would rather do a little blog post than put away laundry or wash up those few dishes in the sink. Just a little recap of the last few days...Mr. O and I took a little road trip this week to take Ruby to see the Dr. It seems she had a large fur ball she just couldn't cough up.
We got that problem taken care of and thought she might look better with a new foot so we took care of that too.

Yes sirree! I got me a new foot pedal for the old gal, and I love it! I never understood why a machine of that quality didn't come with a larger foot pedal in the first place. I think most quilters have one leg slightly longer than other simply because the are always stretching their right leg out searching for that wandering pedal. Well
I think this big guy will stay put much better and I wont be chasing him as often as I did the other one. Look out gals, I will be able to put the pedal to the metal and keep up with fastest of you!
Just look what I found at www.badskirt.com

This little pattern just got placed on my "to do" list.
ZOOM ZOOM!
Here is the link for the pattern
http://www.badskirt.com/directions/BootPattern2.pdf

By the way, while we are talking about links, I can't seem to insert an active link to my blog post with the App I use for blogging on my Ipad. I use Blogger+ . If anybody has any tips for me, I will welcome them gladly.
p.s. When I say "active link" that is my highly specialized tech lingo that means, a link you can just click on and go directly to the site.

I made a 3 more Jumping Jacks blocks, and if you are counting you would think that my total is now at 7, but not so...I have 6 complete blocks. Why you ask, if I had 4 done and finished 3 is the total only 6. Well thats easy...I had to take apart #3 and remake it. It seems I had two different colour fabrics in my block sashing! Now It's bad enough I will end up with 5 with white sashing and seven with cream sashing, but having both colours in one block was just too much! Long story...I might explain once it is all done.

I have to say though, that I am liking them, even with my silly error in fabrics. It has been a little tricky with angled sashings but I think I am getting the knack of it now.
I made a couple little quilted fabric storage baskets, but forgot to take photos of them. I plan on doing another set so I will share those later.
Mr. O went blueberry picking a couple days this week and about 15 litres of berries. I was feeling a bit guilty that he did all the picking while I stayed home, but after standing at the sink cleaning and bagging berries, the guilt has dissipated. I did my part too!

So of course after the berries are cleaned the next thing to do is a batch of blueberry muffins. Yum yum!

We went for a lovely bike ride on some country roads. I started out to do a 8km ride but ended up doing 18, but it really was quite enjoyable.
The wild flowers and scenery were quite pretty and we took a few photos along the way.

We had heavy rains and strong winds the night before and just look at the windfall of apples from this apple tree!
Another curious thing we saw was a "shoe tree". A strange species grown in very few areas...

It really was a very enjoyable bike ride and I don't know why I don't do it more often.

I really need to get serious about my sewing this week. I have several projects I need to get done before our next trip and I have been bouncing around from one thing to another. Can we say A.D.D.?
Maybe tomorrow I will sit and make myself a list of what needs to be done and try to focus on those. Sounds good on paper, but if I know me...well, we'll see...

You're not going to believe this, but...

...but I have written a blog post almost daily for the last two months. Let me rephrase that..I have mentally formatted a blog post daily for the last two months; Something happened from the thought process to the keyboard though and so when I looked at my blog page today there was no news since the first of June. That is totally ridiculous! With all the technology today there should be a way for those thoughts to transfer automatically without me having to actually sit and type them out!
Until I can get that little problem rectified please allow me to apologize for such a long absence.
I cant even begin to bring you up to speed on all the events of the last 2 months but here are a few things that come to mind.
Our grand daughter graduated from high school. Hard to believe she is off to college in less than a month. She not only looked absolutely stunning on prom night

But she also graduated with honours. Way to go Lex!

We took a three week vacation to visit our son and his family. I have been able to attend/host three quilt retreats. Taught a family member to quilt. Took a Craftsy class by Tara Rebman and made a quilt as you go purse called a Tinker Tote.

I added a few extra things to the inside; a couple extra pockets with a touch of trim, and added a toggle to latch my keys onto so I am not always hunting for them at the bottom of my bag and I added a touch of bling to the closure tab.

I will likely make another at some time but make a few changes to the pattern to suit me better. All in all a very successful class!
I attended a garden tour and marvelled at the amount of time and energy some people can put into a hobby of digging in the dirt. ( I'm sure some people say the same thing about those of us with a hobby where we spend countless hours quilting)

I have started two bed sized quilts in the last 2 weeks. One is Quadrille, a Carrie Nelson pattern

Lots of piecing and prep work on Quadrille but nothing to exciting to show you on that one yet...the second one is Jumping Jacks by Fig Tree. There is a Quilt Along on Instagram that I am following and so far I have 4 of the 12 blocks finished.

At what age are we supposed to stop having sleepovers with friends? Just curious because apparently I have not reached that age yet. Mr. O went camping/hiking this weekend and I had a quilting friend come for a sleepover. We stayed up late, ate junk(not too much though), laughed, told stories, took naps in the hammocks, took goofy pictures of ourselves, did a tiny bit of fabric shopping, oh and quilted. It was fun and I'm sure glad I haven't reached the cutoff age for sleepovers yet!

Sue did not arrive empty handed but came bearing gifts which of course included fabric, but she also made me a little gift. It was just so suited to the quilting activity at my work station. Ever time I reached for pin it made me smile.

A Union Jack pincushion while I made Union Jack quilt blocks! I mean how stinkin' cute is that! I LOVE it! Thank you Sue!