Last July when I was on

Pat Sloan's show

, I happened to be on during the same hour as Amy Gibson of

Stitchery Dickory Dock

. Amy was talking about some

work

she had displayed in the

Denver Art Museum's

Spun Exhibit

. Well, you

know

my mom was listening and afterwards she sent me an email that said "We must go see this exhibit! And visit family while we are out there!" (Much of my extended family lives in Denver.)

So last weekend we took off and met up in Denver! What a fun trip. I hope you are ready for some major, major picture overload. We flew in on Saturday, bright and early, and went straight up to get my grandma in Berthoud. I haven't seen my grandma in a really long time, so it was pretty great to get to spend the day with her.

She wanted to take me to her local quilt shop - which actually turned out to be all sorts of awesome! This is the Laughing Ladies Quilting shop. And I can tell you that not only is the shop H-U-G-E and full of great stuff (I picked up some of the latest Sweetwater!), but the ladies that work inside are also very nice and friendly! The store just had a very happy vibe. If you are heading north of Denver or south of Loveland, definitely make the stop to check it out.

After the quilt shop we headed into the mountains to get our tourist on. We visited Georgetown to take my grandma on a short narrow gauge train ride.

It was really fun! Being from the midwest, the mountains are so cool to see. I feel like the Rockies have such great contrast. One minute they are covered in trees. The next it's all rocks that look like they are going to fall on your car. Kidding...but not really. lol

Sunday we woke up early to visit Red Rocks before going to the museum.

That was a fun study in contrast too - one group of people were there and camping out before the Grateful Dead concert Sunday evening. Another group of SUPER fit people were there exercising on the endless stairs.

Next we headed off to Spun at the Denver Art Museum (and it happened to be the very last day of the exhibit!)

The exhibit was spread in little bits and pieces all over the museum. Which does get you to see areas you normally wouldn't visit...but also was exhausting. lol I loved this banner in the building, which included a little section that looked like a ticker tape quilt to me.

There was an area where you could get hands on and try all sorts of things from hand quilting to block designing.

There was a big section of crocheted items set up to look like coral in the ocean.

Really beautiful paper art by Bruce Price.

A section called Material World which were items made out of different, well, materials. From top to bottom, Reconstruction #20 (Sewn fabrics) by Lucas Samaras, 1977; Lucas/Rug (Silk and linen) by Chuck Close, 1993; Rain Has No Father? (Found bottle tops with copper wire) by El Anatsui, 2008.

Loved this piece. Does anyone else feel like they have this many quilts? Untitled by Marie Watt, 2013.

I was also really inspired by the Pattern Play area, designs by Jacqueline Groag. Boy do I wish some of these were printed on fabric today.

This quilt was my favorite, made by Annie J. Peight at age 10(!!), from the Pennsylvania Amish community in 1926. Not only do I love the design, but the hand quilting was amazing. She had acorns around the entire border.

And then of course I had to see Amy's beautiful mini quilt, made from silk fabric her grandfather purchased in France during World War II.

The whole exhibit was set up beautifully.

Looks like someone got ahold of my scissor drawer. Just kidding. ;)

After the museum we had a bite to eat and then headed to Fancy Tiger Crafts, a modern quilting and yarn store in Denver.

They had a great selection!

Monday we were going to drive out to Vail but had to change our plans due to snow creating a problem in one of the tunnels. Yes, snow people. Ha! We ended up going down to Colorado Springs and visiting Garden of the Gods.