Todays and Yesterdays

It's the last red week for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and my Mary's Basket blocks are done. ( I looked back at the pattern the other day, and realized the name in the book was Mary Ann's Basket, so I've been calling it the wrong name all along.  Ack!)

The blocks are pictured here with this little album.  I found it in an antique shop in Milwaukee several years ago.  It's not a photograph album, rather, a sort of autograph book.  The red velvet cover is in sad shape.  Most of the entries were made in the late 1890s, with a few earlier. The album's owner was a schoolgirl named Helen Emeline Zastrow, whose name in written on the front and back inside covers. 

It was a fad in the 19th century (and even later) for girls to get their friends and relatives to sign their books.  Many of the signers wrote little poems or quoted sayings.  One of my favorites of these is this:
"Our to-days and yesterdays are the blocks with which we build."
Very sincerely,
Clara Spies
Sept. 21, 1891.

Of course, having this made me want to know more about Helen Zastrow's life.  As amazing as it might seem, there were lots of Helen Zastrows living in Milwaukee in the relevant time period.  I believe the book's owner to have been born in 1883, the daughter of William (Wilhelm) Zastrow and his wife Albertine Penn Zastrow.  William's parents were German immigrants, but he was born in Milwaukee, like his daughter.
Unfortunately, Helen died in 1907 at age 23.  She was unmarried.  I have no idea how she died.  She is buried in the same cemetery with her parents and grandparents.

So that's a yesterday.  Here's another.

Last Saturday was the July meeting of the Wisconsin Quilt Study Group.  The topic for our meeting this time was antique sewing machines (I gave the talk) but we always have antique quilt show and tell.  This distressed quilt from the 1930s has red print sashing, and cute little 8 pointed stars for cornerstones.  Sadly anonymous, maker unknown, but a fun piece to look at.

What about today?

Good news!  Mrs. Pfaff is back, and back in action!  We're quilting a UFO, and making real progress.

My daughter brought me this mega zucchini (thanks to Google, I now know how to spell it!).  It was hiding in her garden.  I'm picturing lots of zucchini bread in our future.

I'm not sure what else the future will bring, but these are the blocks I'm building with--quilt blocks!

I'm wishing sunshine and quilt blocks for you this week, too.
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches
Linking up and Whooping Up at Confessions of a Fabric Addict 
Busy Hands Quilts
So Scrappy (home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge)
Oh Scrap

Keep 'Em Flying!

Keep 'Em Flying! was a slogan in World War II.  Average citizens were helping the war effort in all sorts of ways, including buying war bonds to fund airplanes, ships, and materiel.  No, I'm not old enough to actually remember this history (but my mother is!)

I was thinking of this slogan when I was making my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks this week.  I'm not doing anything as serious as fighting the Nazis, of course.  But I still want to keep 'em flying.

Flying geese, that is.

Here are my Fly Away Home red blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in July.
I am making lots and lots of flying geese for the RSC this year, and I thought I'd share how I do it.

First, I'm sort of curmudgeonly.  I don't like drawing lines on fabric.  Okay, I CAN'T STAND drawing lines.  I will only do it grudgingly, if I have to.  So I need a method that doesn't involve drawing those @#$% lines.

Also, I'm a fabric miser.  I hate methods that waste fabric.  And I find that I don't use those "bonus" units if they're too small.  It's a lot of work to press and trim them, if you're making lots of geese.  And it's hard to plan what size these bonus units will be. 

Some methods make more than one flying geese unit at a time.  That's great, if you need identical units, but I often don't.  So then I've got another unit to put somewhere.

Another pet peeve is needing two different sizes of strips/squares to make the flying geese units.  I've already got enough odd-sized scraps. 

So, with all those personal idiosyncrasies to deal with, I've ended up with this method.

I use two rulers, the Easy Angle and the Companion Angle.  I've had them for years, and even wore the markings off of one and had to replace it.  
First, I cut the two smaller triangles from the background strip with the Easy Angle.

Next, I cut the "goose" triangle (AKA quarter square triangle) from the print strip with the Companion Angle.

Did you notice the placement of the ruler?  I move it in from the end of the strip.  Then when I've cut the "goose" triangle, I also have another half-square triangle cut.

After I cut the goose triangle, I use the Easy Angle to make the end of the strip square again.  This gives me another half square triangle to use in a different project.  Sometimes I plan and cut both projects at once.   These half square triangles are very useful, and I know just what size they are because of the size of the strip (in this case, 2.5 in. unfinished).

All that's left to do is sew!  First one side:

 Then, press gently, and add the second white triangle on the other side.

Ta-da!  Flying geese unit!

We are so lucky to live now, when there are so many new methods and such great ways of communicating.  There are really no wrong ways to make flying geese, or any other units.  We all get to choose what works for us.

When I'm not making blocks, I'm enjoying the summer with Little Buddy and his big brother Big Buddy.

Here's Little Buddy, just in from the garden.  His face and shirt are covered with raspberries, and he's holding cherry tomatoes.  How's this for red?

These three jokers were playing on the living room floor.  Bella keeps giving them doggie kisses.  Yuck!

Life is, after all, a bowl of cherries.  I will be very sad when cherry season is over.

Til next week, Keep 'Em Flying!

Linking up with So Scrappy
and Oh Scrap.

Inchworms, Misfit Pickles, and Wagon Trails

Red is our color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this month.  It's another red week here, smack dab in the middle of July.  Our little flag is still flying, even though my Little Buddy keeps taking it out of the flower pot, waving it like he's in a parade, and jamming it in again.

There's red inside the house too.  The windowsill in my living room is no longer the Dead Plants Society it was at the end of the winter.  Old plants are cleaned up or tossed out, and new plants are growing and blooming.

We're still picking raspberries, red and black, and we're finding some stowaways on them.  Can you see the little green worm in the bottom left of the photo above?  It's an inchworm.  Who knew they were fond of raspberries?  Both Little Buddy and his 13 year old brother were interested in watching the inchworms move.  I get them out of the raspberries with a leaf and put them back in the yard.  Science lesson in disguise.

My favorite science is cooking, and I'm doing some small batch canning this year.  After all, we don't need huge amounts of canned goods now that there are only two of us living here.  These three jars of sweet pickle relish were made from "misfit pickles".  I buy them from a vendor at the West Bend Farmers Market, and that's how he labels bags of slightly less than perfect pickles.  They're often oddly shaped or small, but are perfectly good.  The misfit label makes me smile, and my mind goes back to the Island of Misfit Toys in the old Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special.

We had good nap times this week, so I got my Wagon Trail blocks done for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  This is 8 of them, side by side.

Can you see the dogs in the light print?   I used this twice in my Wagon Trail blocks, as it's a favorite of mine because ...

it looks like my dog Bella!  She's a classic hound, like the dogs in the conversation print.  This is a photo from Christmas, when she was looking out the window, anxiously awaiting the rest of the family.

There will definitely be more red around here this month.  I'm making 3 RSC quilts this year.
I'm looking forward to seeing what everybody else is doing with their red scraps.

Have a lovely, red-letter day!
Cheers for reading,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches
Linking up with
Scrap Happy Saturday (at Soscrappy)
Can I Get A Whoop Whoop
Oh Scrap

Snakes in the Grass

I am so lucky!  I belong to a great group of quilters.  We do a lot of work for charities, generally getting together once a month to sew.
Unfortunately, I can't sew with them now that I'm babysitting full time.  My little buddy likes to go with me to visit with the ladies and take photos for the blog, but we don't usually last longer than half an hour.
Since I can't help in person, I like to take home something to work on in the evenings, or when Little Buddy has his nap.  Here are some of the strips I took home last time.

Can you see the print in the orange?  Yes, it's snakes!  Yikes!  I am NOT a fan of snakes.  I just can't help it, even though I know most snakes are harmless and actually do good by eating rodents, etc.

There were three different colorways of these snakes including red (above) and black.   So, kind of scary, but still very colorful, right?  I could just think of them as toy snakes.  Yeah, that's it.

So I used the snake strips and some other bright  and light strips from the group stash, and added in my own scraps, to make 16 patch blocks.  Here's the view from my makeshift design wall at the beginning of this week.

And here they are, finished into a top, resting on the grass.  The blocks measure 8 in. finished, and the quilt top is about 49 in. x 57 in.  I hope the child who gets this one will be charmed by the snakes.

I used the tutorial HERE to make these blocks up.  It was very quick and easy.  Thanks very much to Quilting is More Fun Than Housework for writing up the tutorial.  If you follow her directions, each block has only 5 seams (!), and the blocks fit together perfectly.
I'm still unplugged, as Mrs. Pfaff is not repaired yet, but the backing and batting are ready for quilting as soon as she is healthy again.

Here's how far I've gotten on the RSC challenge this month.  Our new color is red.

Are you wondering what this is?  This is part of my new system for storing 2.5 in. strips.

This is an overhead view of the brights drawer.  Each color of strips are rolled up together, so I don't have to go hunting through the drawer to find them.  You can probably tell which colors haven't been used yet  for the RSC challenge (especially dark blue and orange).  There are also rolls for multi-colored strips and a special one for Kaffe Fassett fabric.
The red rolls above are reproduction fabric (on the left) and bright reds (on the right).  Nothing is ready to sew yet, but the fabric is out of the drawer, so that's a start.
Red is the perfect color for early summer.

Strawberries had a short season here this year, but my oldest grandson and I picked them at the local farm last week, and the jam is in the cupboard ready for winter or giveaways to family and friends.

Our raspberries are ripe at last!  Little Buddy helps me pick every morning.  By help, I mean he holds out his hand and says "yum-iny" and I give him berries.

Even with his help, lots of red berries make it into the house.  This is what I picked today.

And here's the design wall right now, full of novelty hearts.  I've got whales, owls, bananas, monsters, monster trucks, cats, dogs, even sharks.
But no snakes.

I'm wishing a lovely week for you, and lots of lovely quilts.
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches
Linking up with So Scrappy
Can I Get A Whoop Whoop 
Oh Scrap