Secondary Passions

Two things got me through this week: anticipation about the new Mad Max movie (the cathartic beauty of post-apocalyptic car chases!) and a trip to the toy store to ogle some of the latest and greatest.

It wasn’t the horses that got me the most excited - though I found myself unexpectedly tempted by the lacey masking on the Chestnut Pinto Cantering Welsh Pony Smokin Doubledutch - it was this product that almost gave me palpitations:

http://www.breyerhorses.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=6877

Yes, it was the model pony pouches. It wasn't the product itself: I am reasonably proficient with a sewing machine and could whip up a half dozen on own in a lazy afternoon, if I had one. Though I do think it’s great that Reeves is bringing this hobbyist-derived innovation to the general public.

It was the fabric: the Blue ones have Gem Twist silhouettes printed on it, and the pink have Gem Twist, the Show Jumping Warmblood, and Newsworthy (and maybe Cigar? - I’m not, and wasn’t about to be, one of those people who opens up sealed packages at the store).

As someone whose secondary passion is quilting, I am stoked about the existence - as part of an official product - of Breyer-themed fabric. If they were ever to release the fabric as a separate and independent item, I would buy a bolt of each, no question.

I had a notion last year to make a quilt adapted from last year’s 25th Anniversary BreyerFest graphic. It would have been a fairly easy and straightforward applique-style quilt: they were solid silhouettes against solid backgrounds. The enemy of that idea, again, was time; like most of my other horse-themed quilt concepts, it’ll have to simmer in the "future projects" binder for now.

I have made a couple of model horse quilts in the past; one featured Hartland Tinymites that I used to teach myself applique, and another featuring the Rearing Stallion, made for a coworker. That quilt is long gone, but I made a mini quilt out of the test block for it:

I was just thinking about that Rearing Stallion quilt, actually, because I was leafing through my copy of the most current (May/June 2015) issue of Fons and Porter’s Love of Quilting, and spotted this intriguing photo:

You might not see it from my quick and dirty scan, but the Gloss Palomino Fighter residing on the shelf is in near-mint condition, with good pinking.

Normally I go through my quilt magazines every few months and tear out the interesting articles and ideas, but this one is going straight into the model horse ephemera stash, intact.