Any time I can get inspiration off of a floor, I take a photo. I am fascinated by mosaics and tile patterns. Above is a detail and you can see the border of 4patches.

I like the way the small green border frames the piece. I think the greens and the reds could be all different.

This was a block that I saw in a quilt in the shop of the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum. I like the different blues that the maker used on the top of the piece.

What I like about these baskets are the little things that make them unusual. In the top photo, the basket has a slight curve from the rim to base. In the second photo, notice the handles added to a fairly usual basket pattern. I also like, what I assume, are the border blocks.

Please note that these were not any of the exhibits. These were items in the shop.

On Saturday, we headed south to see the famed Great American Quilt Factory
I have noticed a trend of quilts shops being in strip malls. I guess it makes sense: go to the grocery store, pick up the dry cleaning, stop at the quilt shop. This was a particularly ugly strip mall, but it did have a great big parking lot, which was good because there were 200 women in the shop when we got there at 10am. GAQF has a block of the month meeting each Saturday. They make up the pattern and the kits and test it on the people who do the Block of the Month. This is how the Welcome to my Cabin became a book and a pattern. The meeting had ended, but all the ladies were in line to pay. We started looking at the fabric around the perimeter and stayed out of their way pretty much. It was no problem because they, apparently, have over 5000 bolts of fabric. The store made up for the ugliness of the strip mall. There were lots of all differenty types of quilts hanging on the walls. Many of them were Possibilities patterns.

After the Great American Quilt Factory, we went to Holly’s Quilt Cabin. St. JCN didn’t really want to go, I don’t think, but she didn’t fight too hard. ;-). Holly’s had more REALLY nice fabric. I bought a lot of FQs and more dots. They had a nice selection of Creative Grid rulers (still need to do that review!) and I bought a 2.5″x12″ model. It will be good for cutting squares for those 4patches I plan to make someday. 😉 The people there were really chatty.

Right, 3rd from the bottom was a fabric that just caught my eye. I don’t usually buy this fabric, but I decided to buy an FQ and put a piece or two in the Cross Block quilt.

Left 3rd from the bottom is a really interesting fabric. It is cotton, but it shimmers. I got it in a couple of colors. I may put it into the silk quilt just to see how it works.

Above are the fabrics that we bought at GAQF and Holly’s.

This is a bear peeking in the glass wall of the convention center. I thought it was really clever. How can I not like the bear anyway? It reminds me of Oski.

clipped from www.oski.com

On Sunday we ate breakfast at LePeep’s near the City Park and then went up to the Denver Botanic Garden. I am not much of a gardener, but I can appreciate a beautiful garden just as well as the next person. This place was fantastic. I liked the way the garden was laid out in rooms. It was so relaxing. If I had not had to go to a meeting, I would have liked to have sat there and read or worked on writing projects. St. JCN loves gardening and is working very hard on her garden. She is also working on my garden a bit: helping me pick out plants that won’t be a burden or take a lot of work.

I thought that this would make a good quilting pattern. I particularly like the wavy, vertical sort of look.

The top photo is a picture of a giant poppy, but the others are all peonies. I have never seen peonies growing in my area, but St. JCN said that she would look into it. She did warn me that these would need coddling if they would grow. In any case, I really took the photos as inspiration for quilts. The colors, the graphic quality are all really great. Inspiring.

The garden had an exhibit called Big Bugs. They had placed large wooden (not sure if all were wooden) insects all over the garden. I saw some grasshoppers, ants, a praying mantis, a dragonfly, and some others. My favorite was this spider on the spiderweb. We walked by and I didn’t see it, then we walked by again and I saw something out of the corner of my eye. When I looked. I saw the spiderweb. It is partially hidden and it looks like it could be real.

Mosaic bench they were selling in the gift shop.