On the road again...

... seems to be the theme song around here these days! Himself and I have made two trips to Cape Breton (5 hours drive away), one to Lockeport (2.5 hours away) and one to Lunenburg (an hour or so away) in the past few weeks. And we don't consider any of them to be our vacation for this summer! To say I'm happy to be home is an understatement at the moment!

Not all of these trips away were devoid of quiltyness. On our first trip to Cape Breton, I made a stop at a new to me quilt shop in Himself's home"town" of Marion Bridge - The Mira Stitch N Post. I made a major score in that the owner was celebrating her birthday by giving her customers 40% off!!!

I might have lost my usual reserve a little here... I usually try to buy fabrics for a particular project and not just because I like them. There's too much evidence of willy nilly purchasing in my stash already! But those turquoises and oranges just looked so good together. And the minimum cut was 1 metre because of the sale, so I HAD to get a metre of each.

 Then I stumbled upon this little gem... isn't it funny how you've never heard of a designer/blogger and suddenly they pop up everywhere? I had only seen the Jaybird Quilts website once before and here was a pattern from the same fab designer. I gave in. Let's not speak of that resolution about books and magazines that I made some time ago.

Of course, she doesn't just design cool quilt patterns. She created this handy dandy ruler to make it easier to make her stuff. I hesitated... I'm not normally into gimicky notions, but it really did seem like this one would be more doable with the handy ruler. Now I'm just deliberating on what fabrics to use.... I'm considering a Christmas themed quilt or maybe the oranges and turquoises. I just can't pull the trigger.

Anyway, our trips to Lockeport and Lunenburg ran pretty close together.. no pics from Lockeport. It just wasn't that sort of excursion. But here are a few from Lunenburg. Just for you, Q-D!

 View from our room at the fabulous Fleur de sel. Doesn't this cry to be made into a quilt somehow?!

 Reflections

 The UNESCO Fresco... shades of last year's trip to St. John's, Newfoundland

Ripply sand at Sand Dollar Beach... I mostly included this one because I'm pretty pleased with the new skirt I'm wearing (sewed up the day we left)!

Our latest trip to Cape Breton featured a first for me - a trip to Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site. Before you inundate me with comments about the horror of living in Nova Scotia my entire life and never having visited, I accept and echo your opinions. We'll just say I was waiting for something big - like the 300th anniversary!

I don't normally post pics that aren't quilt-y, but this place is awesome. Makes me want to do art-y landscape quilting. For which I have no talent, I might add.

On this trip, I knew I'd be chillin' back at the ranch without a vehicle since Himself was working, so I planned ahead.

It's tricky to figure out what projects to bring on an excursion like this. I knew I wouldn't have an iron and didn't want to schlep a cutting mat in a warm car (that being pretty much a death sentence for most mats). So machine quilting won out.... I packed the two Lunch Box Challenge quilts, a baby quilt and a few other goodies.

Not too bat a set-up all things considered. The living room area of our "suite" wasn't a whole lot bigger than this picture shows, but I had a lovely window to look out of and a TV to listen to!

I started off with the orange and blue quilt made by Nurse M (ret.). Because of the usual size and shape of the blocks, I wanted an all over design, but didn't want my usual stippling.

 I opted for a longer version of stippling, looks a little like wood grain.

Only I forgot how much thread stippling (or any free motion for that matter) takes. Nearest sewing notions available - 1.5 hour drive. Ugh.

So on to the other Lunch Box Challenge quilt I have for quilting. This one's tough for me to work on, because it's thoroughly un-Modern. Though the longer I looked at it, the more I thought I might like to make this strip based block for a baby quilt in the future. This one is quilted in straight lines 2 inches apart vertically and horizontally. And it's finished.Guess for which quilt I prepared the binding in advance? If you say the yellow and blue, you'd be wrong!

Now that I've started with the pics that aren't quilts, I can't stop. But it seems a travesty not to include some of the glorious Cabot Trail.

 The Cabot Trail money shot headed toward Cheticamp

 La Bloc, near Cheticamp

View from Middle Head... glorious Cape Smokey


Thanks for reading this très long post! Hope you're having some summer adventures and fitting some quilting in too!

J