Gallery Travelogue


St. JCN wrote 10 pages in her journal about our adventures on Friday. I am not sure I will be able to keep up with that!

In the morning, we set off from Denver towards Golden, after carefully planning our adventures (some plans for a special tour had fallen through, unfortunately), so as to maximize what we could see in one part of the area. I did not want to be driving back and forth across the Denver metro area in a crazy way.

I was shocked at how close Golden was to Denver. We have a map of Denver metro the size of a double bed and it made the drive look like an hour. We were at the Primedia Gallery in about 20 minutes.
The Primedia Gallery is really called the CK Gallery now, but as you can see, the sign still says Primedia on it. I wouldn’t call the gallery large, but it is a nice open and airy space behind the reception desk. There is plenty of space for a smallish exhibit. Photography allowed, which was really nice.
Gallery (back to reception desk) looking left. Conference room is through that glass window.

Gallery (back to reception desk) looking right.

The exhibit was called ARTQUILTImages and was a collection of art quilts. They were good quilts to look at. There was one about the futility of war and it depicted guns. St. JCN and I talked about it and she thought that all the gun imagery kind of celebrated guns. She also pointed out that with the advent of photo transfer, people don’t have to be subtle about their message and, as a result, their message can easily be distorted. In this quilt, all you see is guns. For me, gun imagery does not promote peace. I will be glad when St. JCN gets a blog, because she can explain the subtleties of her argument better than I can.

This is a punched tin cabinet. The designs on each door, as you can see, are different quilt blocks. We were each looking at a different one and I was talking about the Ohio Star-ishness of one while St. JCN was saying that it was not an Ohio Star. It turns out we were looking at different areas of the chest! DUH!

This is the conference room and I liked the way they had their magazines displayed. If I had a big wall that I was willing to devote to something like this, I could see putting books and magazines I wanted to use for inspiration in such a layout.

After the Primedia/CK Gallery, we headed up the road to the old part of Golden, where the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum lives at 1111 Washington Street. I loved the Howdy Folks! sign. I thought it was fun and cheerful. I am sorry I cut off part of it, but I was in the middle of the street taking the picture, so I had to be quick.

If you haven’t been to the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, put this trip on the top of your list. Not only were the quilts great, but the staff was fabulous, too. Joanna, after taking our entrance fee (that is her job), gave us a personalized tour. It was interesting to hear about specific points of the quilts. The museum has a start quilt on right now. There are a lot of fantastic star quilts in the exhibit, but, excuse the pun, the star of the exhibit is Irene Berry’s Lone Star. Unfortunately, RMQM doesn’t allow photos so I can’t show the great use of fabric and the wonderful mix of hand and machine piecing.

As I mentioned in my previous post, a great quilt store, the Golden Quilt Company, is located right across the street! This detour would be a two-fer!

Jessica was the highlight of our trip in the people department. She is the store manager of the RMQM. She steered us towards Harriet’s shop. We met her yesterday at the Great American Quilt Factory, too. She is a great personality and totally willing to share her knowledge.

The RMQM also had an exhibit of Ellen Ann Eddy’s works. She is a quilmaker who knows how to use threads and her machine. I heard QA will be reprinting her book.

In the same gallery as EAE’s works, they filled out the space with a few quilts from their permanent collection. I have to say that simplicity is highly underated in quilt design. I think people need to to get back to the basics in terms of design.

Another Quick Bite (or Byte!)


This was a weird shadow I saw on my wall. Don’t you think it looks like a bear sitting in a chair with one leg crossed over the other?


New fabric.


More new fabric


Pineapples 13 & 14

Kristen, over at Ardent Peace saw the Pineaple blocks in person recently and said she hadn’t realize how large they were. The size, apparently, does not come through very well in the blog format. She asked me to give my dear readers some perspective. This block has a spool of red Aurifil thread on it. As you can see the blocks are quite large.


These are the Pineapple ‘scrap babies’. As I work through the strips, I find that I have litle bits of the strips leftover. I began setting them aside for who knows what. Finally, I decided I should use them up, so I used them on the beginning parts of Pineapples 15 & 16. The above two Pineapples are made from scraps to the point you see above. After this point, the sides get too large for scraps. Notice how much green is in them. I seem to have a lot of green strip ends.


Scrap babies grow up. These are Pineapple blocks 15 & 16.

Mother’s Day Inspiration

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers, grandmothers, godmothers and those who act like mothers, help mothers and support mothers. I heard a nice blessing today as part of Mother’s Day: Bless all mothers, grandmothers, godmothers and those who act like mothers for you are the caretakers of the future of the world.

Big job, but a nice reality check as well.



I have been collecting photos of flowers for an eternity, because someday I want to make a flower or garden quilt. These are flowers from my BIL and SIL’s backyard and I have been admiring their shape for ages. Today I had my camera and good sun all at the same time. I was able to take a snap that I can hopefully use for my quilt someday.


This card was given to my MIL. I took a photo because I like the shadowing and the slight offsetting (is that a word??) of the flower on the right. I also like the way the artist used dots as the stems. I thought the shapes of the flowers were perky and fun as well. If you are the artist, I will gladly put your name and a link to your website here.

Teacher Pillow Success

First, some inspiration. I was inspired by Yarnstorm’s photos, so I took my camera with me yesterday and snapped a pic of these roses in my neighbor’s yard.

Now on to the Teacher Pillows.

They are done except for the hand stitching. I am thrilled that I survived. It is always touch and go at the beginning!


Above is the principal’s pillow. St.JCN said the violet was inspired. I thought so and am glad someone agreed. I saw the quilt that inspired the violet yesterday as it scrolled across the screen in my screensaver. I will post it here, if I find it again.



Above is the Assistant Principal’s pillow. I actually think this one came out the best of them all. I think having enough fabric to use on the back is key. I will try to remember that for next year.


Pineapple blocks 11 & 12 are also done. They don’t fit on the design wall properly with all the others so #12 is hanging off. I think they look nice and cheerful. Not so dark as 9 & 10.


And now for a tip. I used the Jacquard fabric (see example in circle above) that you can run through your printer for quilt labels and for the drawings for the back of the pillows. It works because there is paper stuck to the back of the fabric that helps get it through the printer. You have to peel off the paper before you sew. (I suppose you could leave it on, but I don’t) This product works pretty well, except that if you try to sew through it when the wrong side is facing up, it gums up the needle and the stitches get really small. Normally I try to sew with it on the bottom. Today, I wasn’t able to sew with the printer fabric on the bottom for some reason that I don’t remember now. I sewed through it and immediately got stopped. I had a brainwave when I saw a pile of tissue paper. The arrow in the picture is pointing to the tissue paper I put over the Jacquard fabric just along the seam allowance. It worked like a charm. No sticking needle resulting in ugly stitches. I always press this printer fabric with a piece of clean, white printer/copier paper under the sticky part. I don’t let the sticky part touch the iron or my ironing board cover.

What Could Be Better Than Red?*

From the inspiration department:
Big Chill Fridge. They come in a number of different colors, much more interesting than stainless.

The above are two blocks I made for group quilts. I sent them off today as well as made them! I know it is Friday and I never sew on Friday, but I was hitting the deadline wall and just had to do it and send them.

*Blue is always better than red during football season, but we are not talking about football season here.

Critters on Etsy



I saw these plush critters on Etsy. While I like the “wild abandon design,” I also like the color choices. The red and blue critter doesn’t look too Fourth of July-ish and the pink and green is just the right shade not to be too preppy. I am also enamoured with the stitching. I have often struggled with how to put stuffed items (mostly pillows) together and have them look good. This London artist does it very well.