Fall/Winter Mode

 Welcome to Treadlestitches, and Happy Halloween!

One of the last surviving flowers in our wildflower garden is this yellow bloom, which we brought inside.  It's a cheerful way to end yellow month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  Now it's time to move into fall/winter mode.

We had a little snow on Monday (seen here decorating the rhubarb), but it's nothing like the blizzard we had last year on Halloween, and it all melted away in a few hours.

Little Buddy is big enough now to rake leaves with Grandpa.  In other years, he used to try to eat the leaves.  (He still jumps in them.)

His hat was getting a little too small, so I knitted this one for him.  He chose the colors from my scrap yarn bin--a royal blue, gray, and a light bright green.  I finished it last night, and can't wait to try it on him on Monday.

For now, he'll probably wear it with the brim turned up for a snug fit.

I tend to knit mostly in the fall and winter, but quilting is forever!  One day this week while Baby Buddy was napping, I laid out these flannel tumbler pieces for a baby quilt.  It's amazing how much just doing something this simple can brighten the day.

The pieces were a kit I made for myself from my scraps.  I have several kits cut ahead, so I always have something ready to sew.

I finished sewing the top together this morning.  After it's quilted and trimmed, it will be approximately 36 in. square, just the right size for donating to Jack's Basket.  A blue binding will finish it off.
 

If you have an Accuquilt cutter, you probably recognize these tumblers as one of the first available dies.  I bought one many years ago, and just went nuts cutting up scraps, especially flannel.  I made the quilt above for my oldest grandson, whom I call Big Buddy, at least 10 years ago.  It's now on the bed Little Buddy sleeps in for his nap every day.

I often say I don't do random.  I need my scraps to be organized in some sort of way.  Unfortunately, I let Big Buddy pick the fabrics he wanted in this quilt, and he picked EVERYTHING--camo, cars, dinosaurs, plaids, solids, dolphins, dogs, lizard camo (it's a thing!), monkeys, checks, Spiderman..I could go on.  And anytime I would mildly object, or ask if we could leave one out, he would look up at me with big eyes and a quivering lip, and the fabric would go in.  (I really don't like the lizard camo AT ALL.  It's creepy and doesn't go with anything.  I'm not even sure where it came from.  But it's in there.)

So, with all that chaos, it's not the prettiest quilt.  But with a warm flannel backing it's really cozy, and looking at it brings up memories of when my Big Buddy wasn't so very big.

Here he is in his Halloween costume, with his wonderful mom, my youngest daughter.  He's as tall as she is now, and looks very different with his hair greased up as Danny Zuko from Grease.

Looking ahead to next week, I've got a small problem I hope you knitters can help me with.  Baby Buddy needs a new hat too, and Little Buddy chose this red and green yarn for it.  What would you do here?  I'm thinking of adding in white to mellow it out a little.  Would you use red or green for the ribbing?  I think I've got plenty of either.  Narrow or wide stripes?  Any advice would be helpful.  He'll probably just hate it anyway, most babies hate hats, but if I'm going to make it I want it to be cute.
 

Baby Buddy loves reading books (or magazines, or catalogs, or anything with pictures), which is great for Grandpa and me because it's something we love, too.  The baby also would love to chew on any of this reading material, but we're discouraging that.  

Several times this week both little ones have been cuddled up with me, looking at a book.  Lift-the-flap books are a big favorite with Baby Buddy, while Little Buddy is discovering I Spy.  These are some of my favorite moments of the day.

The long winter is stretched out ahead of us, and it will seem even longer this year with the virus keeping us away from activities we love.  There are things that will help us get through--soups and stews and homemade bread, phone calls with loved ones, playing in the snow, reading good books, knitting, snuggling in cozy quilts.  And quilting, of course!  Our best defense against boredom and despair is common sense and a sense of humor.

One hundred years ago, American women gained the right to vote, after a long, long struggle.  Every time I vote, I think of the suffragettes who were beaten and jailed to gain this right for their daughters, and for me.  Thank you, ladies!  I promise never to take this right for granted.

And thank you so much for reading this!  Have a good week!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches 

 

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

 

 

Bound to Help

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

I am so lucky!  Like many of you, I belong to a quilt group that really cares about making quilts for people in need.  We work together in all the stages--donating, collecting and storing fabric, designing and cutting out blocks, piecing, quilting, and binding.  This month my "homework" was binding a small stack of quilts.

You might remember the first two quilts.  I showed them here when they were twin-sized tops I had made from my scraps.  Now the lovely ladies have quilted them.  Didn't they do a nice job?

Here's the back, two lengths of older but sturdy fabric.

And here's this one, made from Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Mountain Majesties pattern.

Again, nice simple quilting, which really makes such a difference.

Isn't this a pretty backing?  It goes so well with the front.

I loved finishing these two especially, since I started them.  They're kind of like "my" quilts, and I like knowing how they turned out.

There were two more to bind that were made by other group members, and it was fun to finish them, too.

Here's a great idea for a scrap quilt--16 small squares surrounded by a narrow border.  The borders alternate between white and bright green.

There are some fun fabrics in here!

Here's the floral back.

The last one is a crib sized quilt (and you know how much I love baby quilts!).

 The back is a doggie print.

Cute fabrics!  This would be an easy way to put them together, and kids would love it.

Speaking of cute ...

yeah, I couldn't resist, I had to pose Baby Buddy on the quilt.  He's seven months old now, and growing every day.  (BTW, his shirt says New to the Crew).

What about the Rainbow Scrap Quilts?  I have been doing a little work on them too.

I know, the color for October is yellow, which is great, but my Shoofly quilt needed brown instead, so I made these blocks.

One of my old favorite fabrics is in here--millennium fabric from the year 2000.

And here's one of my newer favorites--Lady Liberty (aka Columbia) waving the flag.

Now that all the blocks are done, I'm getting them together.

I'm going to quilt them in three separate pieces, and then add the borders.

The pieced Shoofly blocks are set with this paisley fabric.  A couple of years ago I attended a lecture on paisley by fabulous quilt historian, judge, and appraiser Carol Butzke.  That same day I bought this fabric.  I knew I would use it for this quilt back in January when I started making the blocks.

The pears and apples and applesauce are canned now, and we can enjoy them all through the winter.

I'm not looking forward to winter weather, but I'm getting ready for it anyway.  We just have to get through whatever comes, and it's best to be prepared.

It might be time to start knitting some wool socks again.

Take your vitamins, wear your mask, and stay safe!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy 

Cynthia at Oh Scrap 

 

 

Priorities

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Little Buddy helped us decorate for Halloween this week.  He would like us to have more dramatic displays, like the blow up clowns and pumpkins at his house, but we are much more laid back than that.  Decorations have just never been a big priority.

 

I finally get to display this little one block wonder that I made back in February, during the Rainbow Scrap Challenge orange month.  It started as a mistake, a block that just didn't work in a Block of the Month quilt.  So it got its own tiny quilt instead.

Pumpkins and black cats!

Oops!  Somebody forgot to feed this guy!

How are you doing on your RSC projects?  I can't wait to see all the link ups today.  Above are my last 3 blocks for the Text Me A Quilt project. 

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge has helped me use all colors of scraps, and I love that.  But what about all those strange scraps that don't really have a definite color?  It's really hard to know what to do with some of these fabrics, even though I really like them.

So I added a few of these multicolored weirdos into the Text Me A Quilt blocks.  It's already a bright quilt, so I think it will work out.  No scraps left behind!

I think I'm getting into the swing of full time babysitting the grandkids again.  It doesn't leave me a lot of time for sewing, but that's okay.  I have all the baby cuddles I could want, Little Buddy sings me songs (his current favorite is Roger Miller's King of the Road), and my high school Buddy actually talks to me about stuff sometimes.

My goal for this week was to put the double nine patch quilt top together.  I got it finished just this morning.  This is the one I've been making from a vintage UFO I bought at a flea market and took apart.  Last week's yellow blocks were the final ones, and I had decided on this set when I first started working on it.

My poor dog is feeling neglected.  She would not leave me alone when I was laying out the top on the floor.  (Sorry, Bella!  I will make some time just for you this weekend!)

It's a good sized quilt, 78 in. x 93 in., shown here on a queen sized bed.

All the fabrics I used in it are vintage, including the white squares, the cornerstones, and the green sashing and border.  I chose the green to give it a 1930s feel, since many of the fabrics in the blocks were from that era.  Green was so widely used in the 30s that it almost seems like a neutral. The border is narrower than I would have liked, but I didn't have enough of the green to go wider.

I could add another border, maybe a print, but it's already pretty big.  I'm planning some simple grid quilting, and already have a backing I think will work.

The quilting will have to wait a bit, until I get this job done.  I went to the local orchard on Thursday, and brought home Ida Red apples for sauce, Cortlands for pie/crisp slices, and Honey Crisps for eating.  All of those were seconds, which is like the clearance rack for apples.  It just means they have an irregular or small shape, or maybe a blemish, which doesn't matter at all.  The pears were regular price, and since they're nice and firm I'll can them last.

If you do any canning, you'll know how hard it is to get jar lids this year, and how expensive they've become if you manage to find them.  I'm prioritizing this good fruit from the orchard with my time and supplies.

This difficult year has made a lot of us adjust our priorities, and has shown us what is really important.  Many things we took for granted are cancelled or unsafe.   The list of activities I miss just gets longer all the time.  But, I truly believe it will not be this way forever.  We can handle hardships.  Our long-ago ancestors' daily lives had far more hardship than most of us have ever seen.

Hang in there.  We're going to get through this.  Stay safe, and keep sewing!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Angela at So Scrappy

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop 

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

 

 

 

Patches of Yellow

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  

It's yellow month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and there are lovely touches of yellow in nature all around us.  Like this bloom in my husband's wild flower patch.

Just a few cherry tomatoes are left in my little garden.  They are really more orange than yellow.

Of course, the trees are so dramatic.  I've never understood the term "leaf peeping".  I don't peep at the leaves, I positively gawk at them.

These trees are in the park near my house.  That path is calling me.  Later today, my dog and I will take a walk and do some leaf gawking.

Now, what about the yellow inside the house?

The last blocks for the 1930s Double Nine Patch quilt are done!  It's the fabrics in these little blocks that prompted me to save them from a vintage UFO.

This little kitty seems to be waving hello.

The animals in this print are cute.  And a little weird.  Kind of like 1930s era cartoon characters.

This print is almost modern.

And of course a leaf print.  I've got leaves on the brain today.

Now that these blocks are done, I can start setting them together and planning the quilting.

But wait, there's more!

Yellow Text Me A Quilt blocks are done, too.  And once again it's the fabrics that make sewing this so much fun.

Here's my favorite--two tractor prints!  You just can't have too many tractor prints.

The background print here reminds me of the Japanese beetles that are trying to get in the house now that the nights are colder.  Sorry, beetles, bugs are cute on fabric but NOT in real life.

Last week's little quilt is quilted and bound.  It's a variation of Ring Me, from the book No Scrap Left Behind by Amanda Jean Nyberg. 

I chose this hearts and paw prints fabric for the back, to go with the Clifford the Big Red Dog fabric on the border.  The binding is a red print.  The quilt has been washed and is ready to mail out to Jack's Basket.

Here's how I feel about finishing a quilt:

Woo hoo!  Thanks, Little Buddy!

 How are you doing this week?   Everything is so crazy right now, and that's very stressful.  We have to remember to take care of ourselves.   When I need some peace, I shut off the TV, radio, etc., open the window if it's warm enough, and just quietly sew.  Before long, I'm humming away.

I hope you're humming away too, enjoying all the things that matter most.  Have a great week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Know what else is a great stress-reliever?  Linky parties!  Come and see what everybody is making.

Linking up with:

Angela at So Scrappy

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Cynthia at Oh Scrap