prime time

wouldn't this make a really cool quilt?!?

today i am 61

which is the last prime number that i can be till six years from now

at which time i will be

sixty-seven

the advantage of being 67 over being 61 is that by then i will have been enjoying senior discounts for 2 years

so what good is being 61?!?

not old enough for senior discounts...

too old for the children's menu...

too young for Social Security...

too old to get hired as anything but a greeter at WalMart...

still ... i was born in a prime month

on a prime day

and now i'm a prime number again

and i have been afforded another opportunity to make something of myself

and besides...

i get to wear purple on thursdays 
or any other day

nobody expects me to lift heavy things

i don't have to worry about wrinkles because now i know that they don't hurt and they are a road map of where i've been

young people think it's funny when i accidentally drop the eff bomb

no one tells me that i ought to dye my hair because the silver adds years to my face

no one mistakes me for my children's grandmother

young men think it's funny when i check out their butts

the wives in the neighborhood don't feel threatened when their husbands stop to talk to me

road rage drivers don't get mad at me for driving slowly and stopping for no obvious reason

i have seniority over just about everyone

people think that my being forgetful is kinda cute

and those same people think it's funny when my filters fail and i call someone older than me an old fart or an old bitty

 i can go into 7Eleven at 1 am and buy ice cream bars and honey roasted peanuts, cookies and m&m's, cheetos, fritos and pizza rolls and not have the guy behind the counter give me  a questioning look for my sudden attack of the munchies

not much embarrasses me

i am more grateful than i ever was before 

and those all seem like pretty good reasons to celebrate...

even if i DO have to bake my own birthday cake...

kiss

LuLu likes to decorate cookies with Auntia...

eat your heart out, Gene Simmons!!!

her favorite frosting is not cream cheese or chocolate or strawberry or vanilla or lemon or cherry or mint ... LuLu's favorite frosting is BLACK!!!

if you can't say sumpin nice

don't say nuthin at all...

Thumper's mother's words to live by

Mr. Nutz cooling his mmphms on a hot summer day months and months ago ... i have nuthin nice to say about Mr. Nutz ... so i won't say nuthin at all...

we have been hanging out at our not-so-local quilt shop for several years ... we know the owners, have taken a few classes, participated in Blocks of the Month, and spent thousands lottsa dollars there ... so we have had hundreds lottsa opportunities to hear different politically correct ways of saying 

holy crap!!!

U G L Y - you ain't got no alibi! that's ugly!!! 

it looks like a dog chewed it up and spit it out! 

ahem ... interesting take on your block/border/quilt...

my Personal Favorite is uttered by one of the shop owners when she is at a loss of something positive to say regarding a Miscreant Quilter's latest production...

it's your quilt...

which is always followed by a pregnant pause and some serious head-shaking

she utters these words a LOT at the monthly BOM meetings ... and i don't think that Auntia and i are the only ones who know that she is really saying...

tsk. tsk. what were you thinking?!?

anywho ... i brought Awesome! with me to a saturday meeting for show and tell ... i wasn't going to take her because ... well ... because there are some Not Very Nice Quilters in the World and the last thing that i wanted to hear about Awesome! was any Negative Criticism ... not that Negative Criticism would change the way that i feel about Awesome! because i truly did put my Heart and Soul into making her, and she is even better than i had hoped she would be ... yikes ... i just realized that Awesome! is female ... i don't think i've ever made a not-male quilt before ... anywho, Auntia told me that i ought to share Awesome! with the Real World, and so i did...

and then i remembered something that i already knew about me - i am not good with more than one source of audible input at a time ... i can't process everything that everyone is saying around me, and i am uncomfortable when lottsa people are talking at the same time ... which means that the one phrase i heard was... 

"Good use of color."

when we left, i turned to Auntia and said...

seriously?!? good use of color?!?

to which she replied...

it's your quilt... 

ha ha ha!!!

ding ding ding

here is the Old School Saturday Sampler at the end of round three...

it seemed more impressive when i was sewing the pieced border the night before saturday's meeting

the other Neutrals have baskets or panes or big pieced blocks in their centers ... the Brights' centers are a lot more interesting than the Neutrals - but none of them hold a candle to Auntia's ... oh ... wait ... she says she's gonna start blogging again, so i'd best not post a picture of hers just yet... 
i'll give her a month before i give steal her thunder... 

this month's assignment is this block...

what does that look like to you?!?
i dunno ... it just looks wrong to me... 
like a roofless house knocked over onto its side... 
or maybe an archway that someone forgot to round off... 
so far, mine looks like this...

the little fairy was supposed to have pigtails, but they made her look like she was wearing Mickey Mouse ears ... i am gonna stitch some lines to give the tunnel some depth ... she isn't supposed to be levitating, even if fairies do fly 
except that In Real Life, it isn't crooked ... i really ought to read the instruction book for my camera...

p.s. to Molly - the dandelion blower block is 16" x 16"

huff and puff

The Quilter's Studio in longmont has a new saturday sampler ... the rules are basically the same as the past few samplers...

sign up and pay a $5 fee

arrive by 9am on the second saturday of the month

have the assignment from the previous month completed

show your work

watch the demonstration and 

receive the assignment for the next month, along with some of the fabric 

the pattern this time is Old School by Quilt Soup...

Auntia and i  had to buy two of these patterns to participate ... which is kind of silly ... especially since i wouldn't have purchased even one cuz it's ... well ... asymmetrical for crying out loud ... shudder

for the first month, we were handed two fat quarters in our choice of colorways - brights or neutrals shudder...

i didn't like either one ... both of the focus fabrics looked like old lady scarves dated to me ... so i shocked everyone and chose neutrals... 

bwah ha ha!!!

at the first meeting the Neutrals were handed a fat quarter of a solid cream and a fat quarter of a brown floral fabric and told to make the center of the quilt... 

have fun! 

do whatever you want! 

leave it plain! 

piece it! 

applique it! 

applique and piece it! 

try broiderie perse! 

do what ever you want! 

let your imaginations run free!!!

i came up with this...

be free little puffs!!! dance in the wind!!!

sigh ... it goes without saying i was the only one of the Neutrals who saw dandelion puffs  in the fabric ... which is kinda strange since the fabric line is Dandelion Daydream by Maywood Studio 

Awesome!

waaaay back in september of 2010 i posted about a quilt that i wanted to make for Thanksgiving  (you can read about it here) ...  (and you can read more about it about here) ... most of the fabric that i decided to use was the 

Awesome! 

line by Sandy Gervais... 

the Economy had tanked and i found myself deep in Financial Kimchi, so i was spending a LOT of time communicating with a home refinance officer whose favorite word was 

Awesome! 

or Ruh Roh - depending on whether the news was good or bad...

it was easier to forget the Ruh Roh stuff if i kept busy with the Awesome stuff - planning, redesigning, tracing, stitching, drawing and redrawing, drafting and paper-piecing, embroidering, adding and subtracting, multiplying and dividing, cutting and piecing ... and ... well ... all the stuff that goes with making a quilt my own... 

fast forward to december 28, 2012...

i placed the last few stitches of binding and took out the leftover paper-pieced acorn that i had saved for a naming block ... and gave my quilt a new name ... here is Awesome!

Awesome!

this is how it was supposed to look...

Over the River by Meg Hawkey of Crab-apple Hill

Liz Bowman (Milan, Michigan) worked her longarm quilting magick on it ... she did NOT disappoint, lemmetellya...

wind swirling and leaves - just like i asked!!!

my dream home - complete with flamingos and a dragon weather vane

and my dream truck

i don't think that i could be happier with this quilt ... cuz it is Awesome!