Sunday, May 30, 2021

Hands 2 Help 2021 Finishes

 

It has been so much fun making quilts for Hands 2 Help this year!  The charities are such good causes.

In the back of my mind, as I was making baby quilts, I was thinking of tulips and wanting to make a tulip quilt for Quilty Hugs for Happy Chemo.  I just couldn't decide what pattern to use and (big question) how I was going to quilt it.

Finally (last week!) I decided to use my tried and true Eleanor Burns Tulip Quilt book.  I made a full sized quilt from this book way back in 1992 (!) and have used this pattern off and on since then.  I changed the measurements to fit my scrap savers bins.

Let's tiptoe through the tulips!  Yesterday, I quilted and bound it.  The quilting is a simple 3 in. grid, mostly in the ditch.

I was inspired by this tulip fabric, but I do NOT recommend using a directional fabric for side and corner triangles.  I have lots of very odd shaped scraps and miss-cuts left over.

I had to piece the back, but I think it worked out okay.

The light fabric has multi-colored raindrops.  Just what tulips need!

So that's my quilt for Quilty Hugs.

These are all for Little Lambs, and have been on the blog previously.

Rainbow Bricks:

 

Bright Hopes:


Math Genius:

Pink Trip Around the World:

Field Day (with Clifford):

 
Monsters or Aliens:
 
Joy in the Morning:

Stacks:
And that's it for this year!  Thanks to Sarah for organizing Hands 2 Help every year.  I'll be mailing all these quilts this week.
What am I going to sew now?  Maybe I should check out the dreaded UFO closet.
Congrats to everyone who made quilts.
 

Saturday, May 29, 2021

Summer is Coming, Even in Wisconsin

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It's the end of red month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I'm sort of sad to see it go.  Red is such a striking color.  I used it in the center of the May block for Barbara Brackman's current Civil War quilts blog Block of the Month, above.  (Shown on the top of my Minnesota A treadle.)

The book next to the block in the first picture is an old photo album, bought in an antique shop.  I wasn't looking for "instant ancestors", but I was intrigued by all the photos of children.  This little girl looks like my daughters when they were toddlers.  Except for the fancy curls.  They barely put up with having their hair brushed and combed.

The clothing of the little girl on the right above dates her photo to around the Civil War.  She's posed just like a grown woman.  On the left is a little boy in a dress.  Children of both sexes wore dresses for their first few years.  Easier for diaper changes, I suppose. 

My other reproduction fabric project is done for the month too.  These Poinsettia Star blocks have red fabrics for the star part and a different color for the contrasting squares.  I'm using up lots of 2.5 in. strips making them.

More red!  We went to a huge outdoor flea market a couple of weekends ago, and I got this scrap bag for $2.  The man who sold it to me said his mother was tired of making quilts for her family, and these were her leftovers.  I wonder if I'll ever get tired of making quilts.  Doesn't seem likely!

I cut about half of the rhubarb on Wednesday morning.  This variety is green, with a few streaks of red, instead of the more popular red kind.

The green tastes as good as red, in cakes or pies!  Grandpa kept the baby busy while I threw this pie together.  It was a good day for baking, with a high temp of only 45 degrees, down from over 80 degrees on Monday.  Wacky Wisconsin weather strikes again.  

Summer is definitely coming when the California cherries start appearing in the grocery store.  Grandpa, Little Buddy, and I absolutely devoured these, like ravenous dinosaurs.

Yeah, like this guy!

This week's grand kid pictures are just going to feature Little Buddy.  Baby Buddy caught a nasty cold, and was even running a fever on Thursday.  Friday he felt better, but we still ran through lots of tissues.  He was in no mood to have his picture taken, just wanted to be held.  So that's what we did.

Little Buddy made this cute project from a kit we got for free from our public library.  (Our library is awesome!)  The "swimming pool" is a cup filled with blue jello, and the teddy grahams bears are floating on candy rings or rafts.  We made the jello one day and decorated it the next.

Decorating is always the most fun.

Preschool for this year is almost over, and our Little Buddy will be going to kindergarten in the fall.  He's growing every day.  Now it takes almost every Duplo we have to make a tower taller than he is.

We have a little more time this weekend, so I hope to get some things done.  One of my projects is going to be quilting this tulip quilt as my last donation for Hands 2 Help.  Last Sunday there were only 8 blocks made, now the top is finished and spray basted, so it's coming along.

Happy Memorial Day weekend, to all who celebrate.  In the not too distant past, this holiday was called Decoration Day.  Families went to the cemetery to spruce up the graves and gravestones.  There were often ceremonies and parades to honor surviving Civil War soldiers, and later all other veterans.  Although cemeteries no longer depend on the public for upkeep, we still have the ceremonies and parades.  Maybe some of them will even be in person this year.

Have a happy safe Memorial Day weekend, and a good week ahead.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Angela at So Scrappy
Cynthia at Oh Scrap



 













Saturday, May 22, 2021

Scrappy Fun with Red

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

(For people coming here from Confessions of a Fabric Addict, I apologize!  I totally messed up the photo and don't know how to delete it, sorry.)

I'm really enjoying working with red, the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month.  Some solid red even found its way into this little scrap quilt, which I hope to finish soon.

Meanwhile, more red blocks!  These are the triangle squares ...

and the Happy Blocks.

Their centers are the color of the month in a novelty fabric, and the strips on the outside of the square are just whatever colors go with the center.  So of course they don't really look like red blocks at all.

Living in Wisconsin, I had to make this block to represent the dairy farms and cherry orchards, just a few of the things that make me happy.

Speaking of happy, I finally went back to quilt guild this month!  It was wonderful to see people again.  Being fully vaccinated is such a blessing.

And look what I found on the free table!  Lots of colorful scraps came home with me, to be made into more charity quilts.

In other happy news, Little Buddy turned five years old yesterday.  I made him a Reader Pillow from Allison Harris' pattern in Growing Up Modern.  Back in 2016, I made two of these pillows for Little Buddy's cousins.

The patchwork pocket is a handy place to keep a book or two.  And of course Little Buddy's books will be about dinosaurs (also birthday presents from us).

I only changed two things about this pattern.  I put a binding on the pocket, instead of turning the edge under, and I accidentally made the back opening vertical instead of horizontal.

Here's the young paleontologist chipping out a T. Rex skeleton from a kit as Grandpa watches.  The protective eye wear was Grandpa's excellent idea.

We also had fun with a toy that comes packed in slime.  (It was surprisingly easy to clean up.)

Yesterday evening we went to Little Buddy's birthday party at his house, the first social gathering we've attended since the pandemic started that wasn't just family.  It was nice to do something "normal" again. 

It was hard to get a good picture of Baby Buddy this week, he was moving so fast.  He loves being outside, and we had really good weather most of the week.  He will take off through the yard, and just screech with joy.  Here he's inspecting the grass.

This little friend was also inspecting the grass this morning.  It's eating a dandelion stem!  Maybe we should see if it has any friends who'd like to come over for lunch.  Free dandelions for everybody!

I'm hoping to get some gardening done this week, plus a little sewing, so I'd better get to it.  I hope you have a great week ahead, and if there's some quilting in it, so much the better!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Angela at So Scrappy
Cynthia at Oh Scrap














Saturday, May 15, 2021

Stacks

 Hi!  Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Baby quilts made with novelty fabrics are kind of my thing.  I have an extra incentive this time of year to make quilts for the Hands2Help charity quilt drive sponsored by Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  (Click HERE for more information on H2H 2021.)  Lately I've been going through my books, finding quilt patterns I've always wanted to make.  This one is called Stacks.

It comes from this book, Growing Up Modern, by Allison Harris.  She also has a great blog called Cluck Cluck Sew.  I'm using her free pattern for my heart blocks, by the way.

This is what the pattern looked like in the book, vertical stacks of fun fabrics to be made in three different sizes.  Doesn't look like my quilt at all, does it?  That's because I did the "What If" to it.  What if I made the colors stack horizontally instead of vertically?  What if they were scrappy?  What if they were in rainbow order, and I used a light fabric at the top and bottom?  (Does this happen to you?)

It's still Allison's pattern, just my variation.  I followed her directions for cutting and sewing the pieces, although I made it slightly smaller. The colors are inspired by Baby Buddy's Duplo blocks.

The back is this cute giraffe print, and the quilting is simple lines, done with the serpentine stitch on my Pfaff.

Last weekend was CRAZY.  We had all 3 of my youngest daughter's children here from Thursday through Monday.  I thought I respected young parents before, but now I appreciate them even more!  The kids were very good, but the logistics of looking after a teenager, a preschooler and a 13 month old day and night are serious! 

 And of course, I missed them the minute they went home.

We had Tuesday off from regular babysitting, so I got some red scraps cut and sewn for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  Log cabin blocks (above)

Heart blocks from the crumbs/strings bin

The last of the plus blocks, with some Mickey Mouse fabric I got on my antiquing trip

and this month's ice cream cone blocks.  The flavors are, from left to right, Raspberry/Citrus Sherbet Ripple, Cherry Vanilla (with lots of cherries), Strawberry (somebody forgot to cut off the leaves), and Pomegranate with candy swirls (hey, it could happen).

Last month I mentioned Blue Moon ice cream, invented in Milwaukee, but had never eaten any.  We fixed that!  

Cedar Crest is a local dairy.  They only had Blue Moon in little cups.

Here's what it looks like.  It has a delicious almond flavor, and Little Buddy and I really like it.  You just have to ignore the toothpaste color.

Today feels like a vacation after the excitement of last weekend, but there are still chores to do.  I need to get out to the grocery store this morning.  Maybe I'll check out the exotic ice cream flavors in the freezer case while I'm there.

And now, grandkid pictures.

Baby Buddy busy playing,

and Little Buddy, gently petting our ragged old cat Biddy.

Have a wonderful weekend, and a great week ahead.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Angela at So Scrappy
Cynthia at Oh Scrap