I took this photo to send to my friend to show her what I was capable of when I got on a tear on a summer day.  I picked the mint, ground some of the older mint into tea, tried to get caught up on the lavender that's taking over...and then there's the zucchini.  Like 26 loaves in the past 24 hours.  I looked at the photo I snapped and what jumped out at me were the placemats that I left in the middle of the table.  They're always there, and it didn't occur to me to move them to get the shot.

It made me think about how big a part of my everyday life my quilts are.  They're on couches, running along my tables, they're always covering my kids and they're even on my bed sometimes.  My mother-in-law took me to one of her favourite quilt shops on the coast last year and let me pick out four fat quarters.  In her expert hands, in mere days, she turned out 8 gorgeous placemats that make me smile whenever someone slides one under a cereal bowl or dinner plate.  It's a favourite pattern of hers, and she's made sets for herself, and my
sister-in-law.  They're all totally different and she had us pick our own fat quarters.  She even let me use her 1/4 inch foot on her machine to show me how easy they were to machine quilt; I learned that machine quilting isn't so scary, and that I really, really need a 1/4 inch foot.  More on that another day.  For now, I'll enjoy some mint tea, and get those loaves into the freezer before the teenagers realize that they're still there.