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

blink

and summer break is gone...

i didn't manage to post even once ... it's a little late, but i'm gonna tell you how i spent my summer vacation...

we painted... 
for two stinking weeks... 
the living room and the dining room and the hallway upstairs are done... 

no more green walls... 

there's more to that story, but it can wait...

i did lottsa yard work...

it was hot...

stinking hot...

we DID manage to have some fun...

 where have you taken me?!?

he followed me home ... can i keep him?!?

 crosscut dinosaur track - what big feet you have!!!

 dinosaur tracks across the seabed

up close and personal - with a little help from Auntia

discovering dinosaur tracks on a nearby mountainside that used to be an ocean floor - which is a little hard to wrap my head around cuz now the seabed is a high desert...

and then going to see Jurassic World a couple of times...

meet Rexie - my half-birthday present from Auntia - and her hamster ball/gyrosphere ... chompity chomp chomp

sans the littles because it is waaaay too intense for little kids...

and seeing more dinosaurs at the Colorado Railroad Museum... 

finding fossils

someone needs his toenails clipped

LuLu  cracking geodes

i hafta wear these?!? seriously?!?

Hulk smash!!!

riding the rails

all aboard the dinosaur train!!!

it would be so cool to have a miniature garden railway in my backyard!!!

we went to the Mythic Creatures exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science...

 

no flash photography ... sigh

and escaped without spending any extra money, even thought the exit from the exhibit was a gift shop filled with all kinds of dragons and mermaids and unicorns that were very, very tempting...

we did some Row By Row shop hopping...

 

when she was a little girl i had Auntia convinced that the M on the mountain is for MELISSA ... but i don't think she believes me anymore 

what am i gonna do with all those license plates?!?
and some Rocky Mountain Quilt Fever shop hopping... 
we went on Row By Row quilt shop excursions a couple of times each week, spread out over the summer...
but the 10 RMQFSH shops - over 400 miles on the car's odometer - in one weekend just because there is a "exclusive free" pin at the end was about 200 miles too many for me...

we went to the Lafayette Peach Festival and ate peach cobbler and peach pie and peach pizza... 
it was just peachy... 

and we celebrated my baby boys' birthdays...

 

Samanardo and Leonardo

 

Michael Myson and Samuel Mygrandboy ... 33 and 3, respectively

the only piecing i was able to accomplish was...

 2 times 32

plus one

sixty-four pink roses and one rosebud ... they were sewn into a BIG flimsy that is on its way to Michigan so Liz can work her long arm majick ... and when they come back i'll tell their story...

anywho, summer break is over...

pooped out

which is okay cuz all that fun wore me out, too...

 today it is hot...

stinking hot...

but i know that Winter Is Coming...

i guess so

it snowed on tuesday

and again yesterday
so i guess i was the major holdup

aw come on - you know it's always all about me

and since you asked here are the particulars about the quilt

the quilt is 103 x 103 inches square and it really is square ... the pillow shams are 28 x 28 inches square or, rather, they started out square but the cording around the edges made them a little rounded ... there are 20 small blocks in the quilt that are 9 x 9 inches without the black borders ... the flying geese which started out being birds but decided to be mountains are 1-1/2 x 3-1/2 inches and there are a gazillion of them ... each of the small blocks are quilted with a columbine in the middle ... and there is a columbine in the center of each of the set-in squares of the morning star i wanted Julie Kramer Cole type animals ... each of the mountains has a quilted aspen leaf ... and the morning star which i had envisioned quilted with a circle of life mandala has flaming rays bursting out from the center

sixteen of the small blocks are from the 200ummm5 i think Rocky Mountain Quilt Fever Shop Hop ... we'd never shop hopped before and it took us all of the three days to make it to fourteen shops - ranging from Boulder to Layfayette to Westminster to Broomfield to Wheatridge to Centennial to Parker to Colorado Springs to Evergreen to Littleton to Englewood to Denver but not in that particular order and we covered over three hundred miles ... now three of those shops have combined into one - and all but six of the others have gone out of business not because we haven't done our part to stimulate the economy ... anywho ... the theme was Women of Colorado ... each of the shops selected a famous or infamous woman with roots in Colorado and designed a block to represent that woman's life ... fourteen shops ... fourteen women ... fourteen blocks ... and each with a story ... eventually i am going to post about each of the blocks and the women that they represent cuz it means that much to me ... fair warning ... but not this time

Auntia used 12 of her Women of Colorado blocks to make this wall hanging...which is now quilted and bound - but is STILL not hanging on a wall
and she gave me the two that were left after i begged and pleaded ... the other four blocks that i needed to fill out the borders represent the four seasons...winterspringsummerfall
and now ... i'm gonna get started on whatever it is that i think i have to do today...

the same ... but different

i wanted this pattern from Crab-apple Hill in the worst way ... so Auntia gave it to me for christmas last year...Over the River and Through the Woods

and i was ever so grateful ... and then i looked at it again and decided that i didn't like the colors which, i am sure, surprises everyone cuz they are neutral shudder and dark double shudder ... so i decided that when i started stitching - it was gonna be brighter and lighter ... and i wanted it to be more autumnal ... and i didn't like the words cuz my grandmother lived in california and it was over the mountains and through the desert ... and i didn't want the sleigh cuz i've never even ridden in a sleigh so why would i want to stitch one ... and 51 x 57 isn't big enough...
so ... brighter autumn colors ... with a different layout ... and not exactly the same stitchery ... and bigger
sigh
i wrote down the fabric requirements and kept the yellow sticky with me till i forgot to take it outta my pocket and washed it with my jeans for months...

when i saw Saltbox Harvest i knew i had found exactly the right fabric to autumn up the quilt ... and when we went shop hopping i looked for a charm pack of Saltbox Harvest so i could do some more planning ... Auntia found the perfect fabric for the embroidery and i took the bolt over to the charm packs and placed those lovely Saltbox Harvest prints on my chosen background ... and i thought

bleck - i don't like it. i don't like it at all. maybe i need a different background? wait ... what is this? Awesome! seriously? isn't this the one with the panel that has a squirrel shudder? i hate squirrels. it can't be the one with the squirrel. oooo! i really like these fabrics! seriously, i really do love these fabrics! this can't be the line that has the squirrel cuz these fabrics are .... well ... Awesome!

Awesome by Sandy Gervais
and so i bought the charm pack ... and i bought enough of the background fabric for the embroidery ... and i took it home and put them with the pattern...doesn't that background look like it was made to go with the charm pack?!?
oh ... wait ... it was made to go with the charm pack!
and then i went to the lqs that is closing its doors forever and found some yardage that was marked down a bit...
oooo! it's even prettier when it's in big pieces!
and i really, really liked it ... but ... why are there stars in the middle of the quilt instead of around the edge? and there are still those troublesome words ... what if i take out the middle embroidery ... and move the other two stitcheries to where the stars are ... and piece leaves for where the stitcheries used to be...ooo! batiks! i knew i would find a reason to buy batiks!
and keep the flying geese ... but make an outer border of stars for the top and bottom ... and i still want to replace the sleigh with a ... uhm ... five window wrap around pickup truck ... Auntia is collecting the supplies for this Crab-apple Hill design and it has a pickup truck that i could use ... and i'm gonna need more fabric...fat quarter bundle - score!!!
so i splurged and bought the fat quarter bundle ... this is the second fat quarter bundle that i've allowed myself to buy and it is ... well ... Awesome!
expensive, but Awesome!
a luxury, but Awesome!
frivolous, but Awesome!
and now i have everything i need to start ... except embroidery thread
and time

somewhere in the middle

last weekend was the Rocky Mountain Quilt Fever Shop Hop ... Auntia has already posted here about the hop that almost wasn't ... but that is what she had to say ... and now i'm gonna tell you what really happened in the world according to dianne ... Auntia and i (unexpectedly and quite happily) didn't have to work on friday...

the plan
a) the rest of the quilting world would be working and so
2) we would beat the weekend hopping crowds by
thirdly) starting at the shop that is farthest away and working our way toward home...

the navigator (Auntia) had Yahoo-mapped all of the routes and then i remapped them so that they fit the plan according to dianne and had a couple of additional stops (Blimpies and The Quilt Store) planned ... the treasurer (Auntia) had divided what we told ourselves we could spend which wasn't much into two equal but very small and sad little stacks of dollars ... the bailiff (Auntia) witnessed as i held my hand over Quilts from the Quiltmaker's Gift and promised to not spend more money than we had in our pockets bwah ha ha!!! and to forget that we had a credit card just in case of an emergency ... the timekeeper (Auntia) had insisted on leaving at 0800 hours and had packed emergency rations (including but not limited to fruit snacks, cereal bars, rice krispie treats, flavored water bleck and regular water ... i added goldfish crackers cuz i am not that crazy about any of that other stuff) and the camera, the Yahoo maps and her sunglasses ... we were just about to pull out of the driveway when she realized that her phone was missing ... back up the drive and Auntia rushed into the house ... i waited ... and waited ... and waited ... then i turned off the car and went inside...

i can't find my phone!!!
i'll call it ... do you hear it? it's going to voice mail ... i'll call it again ... do you hear it? it's going to voice mail ... go outside and i'll call it again ... do you hear it?
oh ... there it is.
where was it?
in the back seat

and we were off again...

remind me to buy a map of Denver when we get to the gas station.
why? we Yahooed everything!
cuz i promised myself last year that i wasn't going on another shop hop without a map.
why? we Yahooed everything!
remember the toll road incident?!?
oh ... okay.

we arrived at the gas station ... i swiped the card and opened the gas cap ... wiped it off and wiped off the area around the gas cap ... looked around to make sure there was no tanker in the parking lot ... took the hose off the hook and placed it in the gas opening ... clicked it on ... took the courtesy squeegee and started cleaning the windows ... i worked my way around the car and back to the gas pump...

oh. my. gawd. how much is a gallon of gas this week?!? the pump is reading $59 and we haven't even started this road trip! we had half a tank of gas ... it's only a sixteen gallon tank ... wait a minute ... that isn't even possible ... oh ... i forgot to flip the gas lever ... oops ... boy, do i feel like an expletive deleted idiot

flip ... splash ... gas spilled all over me...

expletive deleted ... now i'm gonna smell like gas all day ... sheesh ... okay ... 8.5 gallons ... that's more like it

i replaced the gas cap ... Auntia wrote down the numbers and cleared the mileage ... i started the engine ... left the parking lot ... headed out on the highway...

i feel like i'm forgetting something...
did you buy a map?
expletive deleted

i'd forgotten about rush hour traffic ... an hour to make a 35 minute drive ... nuf said ... we finally arrived at High Prairie in Parker ... i love this shop ... it has my kinda fabric and patterns and sample quilts ... and the best thing about it is the big purple bathroom - even the ceiling is purple ... they had set up a demonstration table outside the bathroom, so while i was waiting in line (yes, 0930 hours and a twenty minute wait for a pit stop) i watched the charm pack sized Twister being put through its paces ... i wanted one of those puppies! i picked up one and worked my way toward the cashier line ... i kept losing track of Auntia ... she is not a tall person and i couldn't see her over the displays ... she hadn't eaten and she was pissy ... i'd find something else that i thought was cool and track her down ... and she'd mutter whatever and i hate crowds! and are you finished? and are you ready to leave?
i heard rumors throughout the shop that there was a limited amount of the shop hop featured fabric ... Auntia and i had a little discussion about how much we needed versus how much we said we could spend on the hop and agreed that the only way to buy the fabric and still eat lunch was to take out the emergency credit card ... she was totally out of patience and didn't want to stand in line to get the fabric cut ... so i waited till the cutting table cleared out to just one older woman with a walker ... i got in line just behind and to the left of her and started to wait ... i waited ... and waited ... and waited ... she couldn't decide how much of the featured fabric she wanted and thought and thought and thought ... i didn't have a problem with that ... not at all ... even if she wanted ten yards of each, there was gonna be enough for me ... so i waited ... and then another woman with a big black leather purse moved in ... she pushed her way in front of me ... i stepped closer ... she moved in some more ... i stepped up even closer ... she whacked my elbow with her purse ... she picked up what seemed to be the last bolts of the featured fabric and handed them across the table ... i was holding my numb arm in shock and struggling to find the right words to tell her just what an expletive deleted she was when she said she had three orders for both bolts and needed a total of twentysomething ... and that's when i lost patience ... i emptied my arms of all of those lovely goodies that i really, really wanted and stomped out of the store ... i grabbed poor little Singe outta the car seat and slammed his bum on top of the car to take his picture ... i had, by that time, lost it with Auntia, too...

i've had it!!! i've totally expletive deleted had it!!! between the rude expletive deleted shop hoppers and you ... i am totally ready to go the expletive deleted home!!!
fine! fine! then let's go home!
fine!!!
fine!!!

except...

we can't go home...
why not? i am fine with just going home!
cuz ... i don't know how to get there from here ... i only know how to get to the next shop from here and i don't have a expletive deleted map!!!

i handed Auntia the snack bag and told her to eat something ... and we continued on toward Holly's Quilt Cabin ... and ... somewhere along the way i apologized to Auntia for my foul mouth and for blaming her for that mean old expletive deleted beeotch with the black leather purse and she apologized to me for forgetting to eat again and for disappearing on me and we had a really good time the rest of the day

and the truth lies somewhere in the middle

desperate?!?

while we were shop hopping last saturday, i looked and looked and looked for wintergraphix 2 ... all of the shops had lovely christmas fabric, but my heart was set on the new wintergraphix ...... Auntia and i both loved last year's wintergraphix and bought kits for each other (when they went on sale) that were put together by The Quilter's Studio ... the kits are still in their party bags and are likely to stay there a while ...... i was sure that out of eight different shops, at least one of them would have the new fabric ... TQS had some of this year's fabric, but not the pieces that i was looking for ... the people in other shops had a deer in the headlights look when i asked for wintergraphix 2 ... anywho ... i came home empty-handed except for the other stuff that i bought wah wah wah ... Auntia was looking for have a sheri berry holiday and it was pretty much the same story - TQS had some of the pieces but not all of them - and she came home without buying any of her choices, either ... so she searched the internet and found yardage of both of the lines that we were looking for at Desperate Quilters ... i have made purchases from Desperate Quilters before and i absolutely love them ... they carry complete lines of fabric at reasonable prices ... their customer service is beyond belief - the one time that i had a problem with an order it was corrected within 24 hours with an apology and no excuses ... they never over-charge on shipping and there is always a free goodie in the package when it is delivered ... and i love the name ... desperate quilters, indeed ... so we ordered our fabric on sunday (before i went into batik panic) and it arrived on wednesday ... it is washed and pressed and ready for the magic to happen ...... we were supposed to work on Buggy Barn blocks (if the hat fits for me and crazy flakes for Auntia) while Kim is teaching her Buggy Barn class today ... but i don't have everything that i need for my blocks, so we are gonna do fireworks instead...pretty, innit?!?

p.s. - Gran is hosting a giveaway of 30's fabrics ... go check out her blog! she has recipes and stories and embroidery and a lovely, sweet attitude!

cash crop

we saw this beautiful field of sunflowers on the way to longmont last saturday...

...they are especially pretty with the rocky mountains in the background......sunflowers are Auntia's favorite flower so i drove back the same way so she could take some pictures......and it is so cool how they follow the sun throughout the day......there were lottsa fields of wheat and corn and cabbages, too ... but i am glad that sunflowers are a cash crop ... they are so cheery... and sunflower oil is a very good thing, innit?

RMFQSH freebies

there were freebies at some of the shops on the Rocky Mountain Fever Quilt Shop Hop and this was my favorite......isn't that just pretty doggone cool? it is a golf tee with a little round magnet hot-glued to the top of it ... the part of the tee that pokes into the ground goes into a bobbin and then into a spool of thread ... and the magnet holds your needle or pins ... they were a gift from High Prairie Quilts ...... each shop had a free copy of the pattern for their own star (or a kit for $10 each) and at the end there was a layout sheet for putting the kits together ...... The Great American Quilt Factory was handing out little tape measures ...... Harriet's Treadle Arts had homemade cookies and i ate two of the best snickerdoodles ever and postcards announcing the first two books that Harriet and Carrie Hargrave are publishing (very soon) of the Quilter's Academy series...

...and there were some miscellaneous coupons and newsletters ...... at the last shop we received our free commemorative pins for having all eight shops stamped on our passports...
...the stamped passports also served as entries to some drawings for giveaway baskets and gift certificates ...... i am still waiting for Auntia to post her treasures ... she did buy some pretty cool stuff ...... for anyone who is curious about the witch pattern that i regretted leaving behind ... the designer is Happy Hollow Designs and she is called a stick witch ... i couldn't find her on the design company's website ... but you can get the pattern and the embellishment kit here ...... and now i'm gonna go watch Hell's Kitchen - i haven't heard Chef Gordon Ramsey throw any eff bombs in the past seven days and i wanna know who will be the next f@C%ing stupid donkey

electric needles and batik panic

i went back to Harriet's Treadle Arts yesterday to take a picture of their version of the Rocky Mountain Fever Quilt Shop Hop quilt and to order some of the hop's batiks...i took a close up of the sign...when i read the first few lines i thought an electric needle?!? i gotta get me one of those!!! and then i read the rest and decided that i already have one or two electric needles ... anywho ... unfortunately Harriet's wasn't taking orders for the batiks and i ended up buying a couple of quilty cards and a fat quarter of a green batik that i think will work for Mr. Husker's fishes ... then i took off for Tomorrow's Heirlooms because i was sure they were taking orders and because they tear fabric instead of whacking it off the bolt with a rotary cutter (i lose lottsa fabric inches that way - the worst was a total of 8 inches to get the fabric squared up - sheesh) ... both shops had calmed down considerably - there were still a few shop hop stragglers but not the dozens and dozens like the day before ... Auntia had decided that she wanted the very light multi-colored and i wanted the dark green ... so i was prepared to order a total of 5 yards and take my chances on the other five colors when they came in ... but then i found out that if i wanted any of the batiks that the order had to be placed and paid for by store closing yesterday afternoon and i got kinda panicky ... i had been so very, very good at not impulse buying all weekend that it must have made me explode because i ordered 2 yards of each of the different colors, plus extra of the dark green and the very light multi for a total of 15 yards of fabric ... holy crap - what was i thinking?!?

well ... i'll tell you what i was thinking ... i was thinking ARGHHH! this fabric is NEVER gonna be available again!!! this is a once in a lifetime opportunity!!!
my brain went whoosh!!!
and the credit card went swish!!!
and i walked out of the store in a hazy daze ... and then i drowned my sorrows in a raspberry iced tea and smothered my shame with a grilled chicken burrito from Qdoba (is it just me or does $5.99 seem like a lot of money for a burrito?)

a celebration of stars

the theme for this year's Rocky Mountain Fever Quilt Shop Hop was stars ... the shops designed a Colorado-themed batik (exclusive to the eight shops in the hop) that is used in the shop hop quilt...

this is a fat quarter of the dark green variation - it had to come home with me
...with pine cones and aspens and columbines ... Colorado's state tree is the Colorado Blue Spruce - the pine cones do NOT look like a spruce tree's cones, but they DO look like the ponderosa and lodgepole pines that are dying on a massive scale in Colorado's pine forests from beetle-kill ...... our autumn color is gold - aspen gold - the mountain sides are covered with great splashes of gold mixed among the pine green and even natives make the journey to see the glorious display of color in late september ...... our state flower is the Rocky Mountain columbine (Aquilegia caerules) and our state song is Where the Columbines Grow (although in 2007 the Colorado General Assembly made John Denver's Rocky Mountain High the other official state song ... too bad they didn't spend more time working on the budget and less time pondering whether or not being high in Colorado is natural vs. drug-induced) ... it is sad that when people around the world hear "columbine" and "Colorado" they think of the high school massacre and not of the beautiful lavender and white flower ...... anywho, the batik is absolutely gorgeous ... and, for the most part, not available......we did find yardage of the multi-colored dark and light, and a bit of the light green ... but i wanted the dark green and it was sold out except for a few fat quarters at all of the shops ... everyone was taking orders ... which is good and bad ... if the dark green had been available i would have bought lots of it - at least four yards - on the spot ... but now i will have time to rethink and since i have no actual plans for the fabric maybe i won't be buying four or five yards after all ...... anywho, each of the shops designed a star in this quilt...this sample was at Creative Needle and was our favorite ... the quilt at Harriet's Treadle Arts was gorgeous, too
...and had kits or patterns available for each of their stars ... we went with the patterns and not the kits ... i am not a big fan of shop hop kits - there is no extra fabric to fix my mistakes ... most of the shops' samples were octagon shaped quilts that would have made a nice tree skirt or table topper ... but i wasn't all that crazy about the multi-colored batik (i really, really want the dark green) and i'm not liking of some of those color-combinations in the stars, either ... i didn't get a picture of the shop hop quilt at Harriet's Treadle Arts, but i do remember that it had a little sign attached that said it was not quilted on a longarm - it was hand stitched with an electric needle ... i'm gonna try to make it back there today so i can take a picture of it ...... Auntia has already updated her blog with pictures of the fronts of all the shops and our little stowaway ... she hasn't shown her new treasures ... so i guess i will wait to show mine, too ... i was much, much better at NOT going crazy with impulse buying ... the only thing that i wanted very, very, very much and walked away from was a pattern and the embellishments for a quilted witch that fit over a cardboard tube at The Great American Quilt Factory ... the shop is a long drive from Near Broomfield and i thought that if i left without it that i would be okay ... but now i think i will sign off this post and do a search for it