and seven to grow on...

even before i finished putting together eight squared , Melissa told me
 i want one just like it...

just like it?!? i asked

yes, she said

 except... 

i would like peach-colored roses

and a purple background

and pillow shams that will fit my king-sized pillows

so ... NOT just like it?!?

and then she reminded me that she was gonna be thirty in december, and maybe it could be her birthday quilt

well ... that will mean a quilt with 30 roses instead of 64...

even though i knew i didn't want to make another 64 of those stinkin' paper-pieced roses, thirty didn't seem like all that much...

okay, she said

except...

i'd really like it to be square ... how are you gonna make thirty roses into a square?!?

easy - the front will have 25 roses and the back will have the other five...

okay, she said

except...

i really kinda need all thirty roses to be on the front...

huh?!? you NEED all thirty roses to be on the front?!? how 'bout five rows of six?

okay, she said

except...

that wouldn't be a square ... i really need it to be a square...

you NEED it to be a square?!? okay, how 'bout i make it 6 roses by 6 roses? and that would give me till your 36th birthday to get it done...

okay, she said

except...

i want it this year...

when i was a kid and i said i wanted something, my dad would tell me that people in Hell want ice water ... and i remember thinking that people in Hell would probably settle for ANY kinda water...

anywho...
 long story short...
is it too late for that?!?
 i pieced the 36 roses and put them all together...

 then i bought all the purple Lakehouse hydrangea petal fabric i could find 

from wherever i could find it 

and added some pale green batik
cuz i couldn't find enough purple Lakehouse hydrangea petal fabric

and a naming block rose for the backing 
and sent it off to Liz to be quilted... 

i was gonna name Melissa's quilt

  and one to grow on 

(that's what my mom called the extra candle that she added to my birthday cake)

but with all those extra roses, it's

And Seven to Grow On...
cue the angels...

Your thirties are just like your twenties ... except you look ten years older and everything is a little less fun.

anonymous

some 'splainin'

because sometimes two words may not be enough...

it never occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, not everyone knows about training dragons...

Halloween is a Big Deal around here and Melissa ALWAYS dresses in costume...

when she was little, i made the costumes for her...

Flower Power

my very own Little Mermaid

Princess Bumblebee

unless i ran outta time - then my mom would help out...

Miss Kiss

clownin' around

and now she makes her own... 

baneling bridesmaid

Lieutenant Ihearya

the ranger's apprentice

 this year she decided to be Toothless from

  How to Train Your Dragon...

Toothless - the Night Fury

she spent MONTHS crocheting the shawl...

the wings of a pitch black dragon

and she told me that it was totally worth it!!!

night furies

tru dat

assiduous Apis mellifera

making a mess...

trim ... trim ... trim

because this...

 looks like i finished the cross-stitching in 1998 ... and then it was lost in the Great Pile of Stuff for eighteen years

was finally made into a pillow...

and the pillow sorta kinda goes with these... 

too bad there are no cookies in that cookie jar

how 'bout a closer look at that little picture...

Sweet Melissa

anywho... 

the red table complained a lot ow!!! you're scratching me!!! when i placed the cup on it, so those pinwheels and a bunch more and that bee and a bunch more are gonna grow up to be a table runner someday...

Honey is sweet, but the bee has a sting.

Benjamin Franklin

over grown

four of two bits

a bit more drafting for paper-piecing from Quilted Legends of the West by Judy Zehner and Kim Mosher and i came up with these quarter-sized spirit guides...

thunderbird

plains buffalo

buffalo

polar bear

i was gonna draft and piece a couple more animals, but even two-bits-sized, four is gonna be enough...

i am linking up to WIPs with Friends at Mama Spark's World

be forewarned - if snakes freak you the eff out - guilty as charged - you might want to not look too closely at the pictures of her lovely littles and just skip down to the sneak peek of what looks to be another gorgeous wedding quilt

Even snakes are afraid of snakes.

Steven Wright

herd word

the word on the herd is...

stomper and smaller stomper

and that's all i have to show for the week...

weak, innit?!?

i'm linking up to WIPs with Friends at Mama Spark's World

The numbers were in line with lowered expectations.

Mark Davis

stomp stomp

i'm not a fan of the stitch and flip method of piecing because when i try to do it i am so lazy and sloppy imprecise, especially when the flipping is an itty-bitty square that makes a ittier-bittier triangle... 
i usually draft those types of blocks so i can paper-piece them...

and after i draft them, i hafta test them...

when i needed to test a quarter-sized paper-pieced draft of the Quilted Legends of the West by Judy Zehner and Kim Mosher Plains Buffalo before i make the REAL one for yet another WIP i got this...

goin' up to the Spirit in the Sky

those mountains were crying out for a white buffalo to come stomping across them...

 i spread out the pieces that i have so far...

some cohesion might be nice
and realized that my White Buffalo quilt is becoming a Buffalo Buffalo quilt...

that being said, i'm gonna need a lot more buffalo...

when i found this at the Colorado Row by Row site, i decided that i HAD to go to the Golden Quilt Company and get the free pattern...

and after i finish watering the grass bleck and moving around the dust bleck and scrubbing sinks bleck i'm gonna work on building up my herd...

i'm linking up to WIPs with Friends at Mama Spark's World

It is not so much that Man is a herd animal, said Freud, but that he is a horde animal led by a chief.
Ernest Becker

stomp

after a year of NO progress...

it's a start

trimming the stitcheries took a lot of courage...

 i held my breath each time the rotary cutter met the mat, lemmetellya...

i'm linking up to WIPs with Friends at Mama Spark's World

What did the buffalo say to her son when he left for college?

Bison.

Anonymous

freedom rings

firmly planted

what aboutin'

before i added the star borders to the Old Glory panel, Melissa came up with a positively brilliant idea...

What about muskets - big honkin' muskets - instead of stars?!?

i tell you, the woman is waaaay more creative than i am...

oooo!!! yeah!!! muskets - a call to arms - like from the Revolutionary War!!!

Exactly!!!

or what about a musket on the Original Flag side and a modern Army rifle on the Present Day side?!?

Oh yeah - that would be even better!!!

and i proceeded to do an internet search for a paper-pieced musket and rifle...

or an appliqued shudder musket and rifle...

or even an embroidered musket and rifle...

three wasted hours later...

 i decided to go with the stars...

one for each of the original colonies ... boy howdy that looks crooked - i oughta be more careful when i take pictures

it isn't muskets and rifles, but it'll do...

and if i ever see that panel again, i'm gonna buy one for Melissa so she can carry out her brilliant idea on her own eagle quilt cuz it would be awesome!!!

after the flying eagles, stars, and words were added, i thought i was ready to make the red and white stripes...

not so fast - it definitely needed something between the red and the blue...
 and that started another search for just the right gold for a peeper border...
after checking the yellow/orange/gold stash of batiks and of cottons and finding NOTHING that would work - too yellow, too brown, too orange (can anything be too orange?!? the answer is, actually, yes - hard as it is to admit) - i decided not to settle ... i was gonna hafta BUY some gold...

 sigh...

i was really, really trying to make this one from stash - and i already had to buy the red (there is no red in the stash - what is up with that?!?) and the white (Stonehenge whites are hard to match unless they are actually Stonehenge whites) and the blue eagles that were gonna be the outer corner stones...

sigh...

anywho, i put 1/4 yard of gold on my list of things to look for while we're Row By Rowing ... and THEN i had to find something - ANYTHING - to take with me that was the RIGHT gold ... which ended up being a skein of yarn from Melissa's sunflower afghan - yeah, there is still a LOTTA yarn leftover - and put it in the car...

where i found the gold is another story for another day - and it involves Taking The Low Road - suffice it to say that i DID find it - and it is cut, pressed and basted... 

and i said to myself...

self, it is time to start the stripes - gotta cut the cornerstones first so you'll know how many stripes and how wide to cut them...

when Melissa came up with yet with ANOTHER brilliant idea...

What about circles of flying geese for the cornerstones - you know - like Betsy Ross's original flag - instead of the blue eagles?!? you really oughta consider it...

ooo!!! yeah!!! and when i was a kid there were only 48 stars on the flag, and there are 12 geese in each block, and twelve times four blocks is 48!!! throwback ... vintage ... honoring the past ... it's kinda my duty, innit?!? 

Duty ... doody ... you said doody!!! ha ha ha!!!

seriously?!? what are you, 12?!? anywho ... i can actually MAKE circles of flying geese without wasting hours and hours searching for a pattern cuz i already HAVE a pattern!!! 

and that's what i'm doing now - working on my bird doody duty...

round and round and round

i am linking up to WIPs With Friends at Mama Spark's World

There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.
Marva Collins

duty birds

wind's day

yep - the wind is blowing on wednesday...

it's drying out the grass and blowing pollen and cottonwood puffs all over the place and it's hot...

so...

 i'm gonna stay inside and work on this:

wasn't done for Flag Day ... won't be done for the 4th of July

the plan is to stretch the eagles in flight across the top...

 put some five-pointed stars up the sides...

some words across the bottom...

then an outer border of red and white stripes with blue corner stones...

and the REST of the plan is to stay outta the heat...

i am linking up to WIPs With Friends at Mama Spark's World 

A friend is like an eagle; you don't find them flying in flocks.

anonymous

dirty toes

cover up

remember when Niki Masonsmom cross-stitched this flamingo for me? 

it was an excellent christmas present waaaay back in 2014!!!

  the stitchery was moved from the pile of christmas presents

 to the pile of write-thank-you-notes 

to the pile of  this-is-cool-but-what-am-i-gonna-do-with-it 

to the all-encompassing Great Pile of Stuff 

where it took up residence till last summer...

and that was when i decided what to do with it...

still good advice

Shabby Fabrics had a tutorial but i can't find it now demonstrating how to make quilted covers for electronic devices... 

i added a pocket cuz i don't wanta lose my earbuds...

can you hear me now?!?

anywho, i really like(d) my Kindle cover... 

 Melissa decided that SHE needed one, too, and i told her i would make one for her for christmas...

last christmas...

it is now june...

a pack on a pocket put-er-in-er

 it's only six months late...

How did it get so late so soon?

It's night before it's afternoon.

December is here before it's June.

My goodness how the time has flewn.

How did it get so late so soon?

Dr. Seuss

pink slip

iota

guilt kicked in yesterday and i MADE myself work on those big old piles of stuff...

and after five hours there was not one iota of progress to show for all my efforts...

 it is, in fact, worse...

sigh...

so this morning i did this...

sometimes more is more

but FIRST i made myself clean out the car... 

and then i drove it down to the car wash and spent five dollars on their vacuum - there is no way i wanted all that stuff in MY vacuum cleaner, lemmetellya...

I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota.

Gustave Courbet

i oughta

i oughta be going through those big old piles of pictures and memorabilia and junk that have taken up residence in the dining room...

and i oughta be washing down the dining room table that is under that big old pile of stuff

 so we could actually DINE in the dining room... 

and i oughta be mopping the floor that is under that dining room table that is under that big old pile of stuff so we could walk across the floor without gathering dust bunnies on our socks...

yeah...

i oughta...

so...

what AM i doing?

definitely not that stuff  up there... 

nope...

 i'm trying to draft a pattern for a star quilt that i saw a gazillion years ago...

smoke that peace pipe ... bury that hatchet

which makes total sense, right?!? 

never mind the fact that it would be so much easier to draw straight lines and color between them if i could spread out on the dining room table...

or the fact that the Great Pile of Stuff in my bedroom has grown dangerously high and is threatening to topple over in the Dead of Night...

or the fact that i need another half-baked idea for a quilt that is gonna be so far down that it will be lost in the GPS for years like i need a hole in the head...

i don't wanta sort or clean or mop - i pulled weeds this morning and now all i wanta do is put the teepee down on paper and figure out the peace pipes...

i'm linking up to WIPs with Friends at Mama Spark's World

Seems like everything people oughta know they just don't want to hear. I guess that's the big trouble with the world.

Daniel Mainwaring

party ponies

three or four years ago we were on the Rocky Mountain Quilt Fever Shop Hop and Auntia Melissa saw some unicorn/pegasus fabric at Holly's Quilt Cabin that she fell in love with...

but we had already spent a gazillion dollars and there wasn't any money left...

fast forward a few months... 

we were having a winter-time discussion about how cold it is every january...

and that led to another discussion about how hot it is every august...

and that led to a discussion about how hot cars can be when left in the sun...

and that led to a discussion about whether it is worth taking the time to put up windshield shades...

and that led to a discussion about how hot the car was during the shop hop...

and that led to a discussion about what we would have liked to buy during the shop hop that we had to leave behind because we ran outta money...

and Auntia Melissa kept mentioning the unicorn/pegasus fabric at Holly's Quilt Cabin that would have made an awesome quilt for LuLu...

but i didn't remember any unicorn/pegasus fabric...

so we piled Super Sam and LuLu into the car - along with fruit snacks that are actually little plastic packets of Shut the Hedoublehockeysticks Up and the diaper bag cuz Super Sam wasn't doing his Business in the twahlette yet - and went on a winter adventure to Centennial...

and when i saw the unicorn/pegasus fabric...
 well... 
i fell in lurve with it...
but i wanted it for me cuz that's how i roll...
and Auntia Melissa said that if i bought enough for two quilts, she would make one for LuLu and one for me...

which seemed like a pretty good idea at the time...

fast forward a couple of years...

Auntia Melissa made Party Ponies and gave it to me for christmas last year...

 oooo!!!

 flannel backings are the best!!!

for ME!!!

Auntia Melissa eventually made one for LuLu, too, and named it Swift Wind because Party Ponies was already taken - bwah ha ha ha...

LuLu had to wait till now for hers - nanner nanner!!!

Party Ponies and Swift Wind were made with the same Grand Stand pattern from Mountain Peak Creations that was used to make Boney Maroney and Dinosaur Tracks, and was quilted by Liz Bowman of Milan, Michigan


"Dude!" said a party pony as he unloaded his gear, "Did you see that bear guy? He was all like: 'Whoa, I have an arrow in my mouth!' "
Rick Riordan in The Sea of Monsters