Goodbye to July

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

 How are your RSC blocks coming along?

It's the last week of dark blue for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I got my hsts done, and some of them use strips I cut from scraps I bought at the museum sale in June.  It's fun to use new fabrics, no matter where they came from!

Speaking of scraps, these are my dark blue small scraps and strips, plus a couple of orphan strip sets.  I used them to make these ...

hearts!  We're getting close to the end of the RSC year, and I think I finally have a plan for the heart blocks.  They're only 6 in. square, but I should have enough of them to make a good sized baby quilt.

I've also got a plan for my ice cream blocks, seen here in shades of dark blue.  I'm calling them blue berry and/or plum, with stars or sprinkles or swirls.  Mm, ice cream.  Just what we need on a hot summer day.

When my mom was here a couple of weeks ago, she and my husband and I spent a lovely Saturday at the Art Institute of Chicago.  I of course took photos of art that inspired me as a quilter.

This is a fireplace screen, made of mosaic tiles.  Check out that border!

The carvings on this antique chest look like quilting lines to me.  

This one even has stars!

Lastly, returning to the blue theme, is this chocolate jar.  Chocolate definitely deserves a beautiful container.  It's one of nature's miracles we sometimes take for granted.

I think I need to get some chocolate ice cream! 

Have a great weekend, and a lovely week ahead, with whatever treats you like best.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap 

Scraps, Quilt Blocks, and Cat Shoes

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Things might be getting a little out of hand in my scrap processing center, otherwise known as my sewing room.  To be honest, it's a hot mess.  That's because I needed to sort the scraps in 3 different overflowing baskets, and the only way I know how to do that is to dump it all out on the floor.  So I did.

First I dealt with all the Scooby Doo fabric left from backing two quilts.  (I should have done this right after I trimmed the quilts!  But there were so many other fun things to sew.)  These pieces made strips from 2 in. to 5 in. wide.  They will come in handy whenever aqua is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month.

Next, solid scraps were removed to an undisclosed location, some repulsive fabrics were set aside for possible donation (hey, other people might not think they were repulsive!), and a few tiny or otherwise unusable bits were binned.  Now for the real work.

When I was done, I still had 3 baskets of scraps, but now each one had different kinds of scraps in them.  This antique basket has 1800s reproduction scraps plus some traditional fabric scraps that will go with the repros.

This basket is all light scraps, the ones that go with bright fabrics.  Most are what we quilters call "white-based neutrals".  It will be very handy to pull from this basket when cutting pieces for quilt projects.

This last basket is sorted by color into plastic bags.  These are my brights, and I have been keeping up with them better than anything else.

Some colors have their own bag, others are sharing.  My biggest pile of bright scraps are multicolored.  I'm thinking about some projects to specifically use multicolored prints.  Any suggestions?

Whew, thank goodness the straightening up is done!  Back to sewing!

Here's the design wall, full of Happy blocks and log cabins.

Four of these blocks are purple.  Somehow I overlooked them last month.  The centers of the happy blocks are from scraps of the RSC color of the month.  For the outside strips, I just use a coordinating color.

I have used up all the dino print yardage I collected for Little Buddy's dinosaur quilt.  There are a few scraps left, though.  Here's one...

and here's another.

The log cabin blocks are always fun to piece.  I got to use some of the "new" fabrics I bought at the museum rummage sale in June, plus a lot of old favorites.  Dark blue is one of my favorite colors.

And now for some grand children pictures.  These are some more from our picnic at a local lake.

Baby Buddy was a little worried about the water, but excited about the sand.  That's Grandpa behind him.

Little Buddy and Miss E made filling a hole with water an exciting adventure.  It really was a beautiful place to play.

My love of novelty prints is not a secret (!) but it just might be getting out of control.  Check out these new shoes I bought.

Cats!  With fish and hearts!  I totally love them!  And I really don't care if wearing them makes me look like a crazy old lady.  The name of the shoes is Kitten Bitten, and they are very comfortable.  Bonus!  For every pair, a donation is made to animals in need.  No details on what that donation is, though.

It feels so good to get back into the sewing room!  I was sick with a sinus infection, and I really missed it.  There's just nothing like cutting up scraps and sewing them into something.

But I don't have to tell you that!

Have fun this week, whatever you do.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Positively Bright

 It's a top!

My quilt top for the Positivity Quilt Along is done! 

My take on this pattern is a little unusual.  Here's how I laid out the blocks.  There are six blocks in each of eight bright colors.  Three of the six have light backgrounds and three have dark backgrounds.  Those six were sewn into a rectangle 2 blocks by 3 blocks, and then all the rectangles were added together.

When finished, this quilt will go to Mercyful Quilts at Mercy Hospital in Sacramento, CA.  The quilts in this project are used to comfort a dying person, and then are given to the family after their loved one has passed away.

I know these bright colors might not be everybody's cup of tea.  Most of the quilts I make are baby quilts, meant to cheer families in difficult circumstances, such as hospitals.  When I think of how sterile hospitals are, bright colors seem like a good antidote.  So I chose the same kinds of colors for this quilt.

Maybe a family will choose this quilt to memorialize a "colorful" personality.  I can think of a few characters in my own family who would fit the description, such as my great aunt Mabel.

If you've read my blog before, you know I love novelty prints.  I restrained myself from using them on this quilt, with a few exceptions.  The yellow print above is meant to be cheese, which I found out from reading the selvedge.  I don't think anybody would know that just from looking.  (I didn't!)

Hearts seemed appropriate.  I used this print in two places.

This is my favorite print in the whole quilt.  The words are faith, hope, and love, arranged in a circle.

I hope this quilt conveys the positivity I feel, and gives comfort to the patient and his or her family.

Many, many thanks to Preeti of the Sew Preeti blog for giving us this challenge, and to all her helpers and minions.  Special thanks to Bernie of Needle and Foot for all her work for Mercyful Quilts.

Linking up with Needle and Foot for the flimsy linky party!  Come and see all the wonderful quilts everyone has made!

 

Tangled Up in Blue

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Lots of blue scraps were under my needle this week.  Dark blue is the color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I'm throwing in medium blues too.

Novelty prints can look kind of weird when cut in small pieces, can't they.  Poor headless dinosaurs and kitties.

You can almost tell there was a giraffe and a zebra on this print.  Sadly cut up, but the colors are good.

I'm running low on light fabrics again.  This always seems to happen, even though I buy them all the time.  My favorites here are the flip flops and the hedgehogs.  Not much contrast with the rest of the star, but fun to look at.

In other news, my Mom was here!  One sunny morning, we took Baby Buddy and the dog for a walk in the park, and our little guy had so much fun going down the slide.  He was actually giggling!

On another day, we took a picnic to a lake and met my oldest daughter and her kids.  It was cool and rainy, but we went anyway.  The kids all had a good time in spite of the weather, and we had a nice visit.

We had a whole family get together, and took the obligatory family photo.  I feel so happy and lucky to have all my kids and grand kids living nearby.  I am also very grateful that my mom braved the airline mix-ups and hassles to come here, and that most of us have been vaccinated so we can be together.

So, what's on the agenda for my sewing today?  These blue blocks, all cut and ready to piece.  But they're not for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

These are my last blocks for the Positivity Quilt Along, which just happen to be blue.  (Click HERE for more information.) The tops are due to be finished by TOMORROW.  With only 8 blocks to go, I will get it done today.  The real question is how to set the blocks, but that part will be fun.

I hope you are having a lovely day, doing something you enjoy.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Angela at So Scrappy

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Cynthia at Oh Scrap 

Old and New

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  

Once upon a time, probably in the 1890s, someone made a quilt.

Eventually, the quilt found its way to an antique shop, where a person (who shall not be named) bought it.  This person had good intentions.  The quilt appeared dirty, so it was run through the washing machine.  (If you are screaming "NO!" now, I hear you.)  This is an object lesson in what NOT to do with an old quilt.

The fabric that seemed dirty may just have had an unstable dye, but the rough action of a modern washing machine was enough to shred it.  The white you can see here is the batting showing through.

There was another problem with the madder red fabric used for the setting.  Do you see the little holes in the segment above?  For each small hole, there was once a dark brown figure.  The dye for these figures has eaten through the cloth.  The white is the batting showing through.  It is not uncommon to find this in antique fabric, usually with dark brown or black figures.

The most amazing part of the quilt are the star blocks, which are in very good shape.  These were good quality fabrics with stable dyes, closely quilted which always helps a quilt hold together longer.

The floral back is in good condition also.

What could be done?  I could not fix this quilt for the person who bought it and washed it.  It was very sad, really.  I liked the design, and wondered what the quilt might have looked like when new.

Maybe it was something like this.

I made a replica of the top with 1800s reproduction fabrics.

This was more than 20 years ago, and the top was waiting patiently in the UFO closet for so long because I couldn't figure out how I was going to quilt it.  

Right before the pandemic, I did something I should have done years earlier.  I asked my friend, Joey Mahieu, a professional quilter,  to quilt it for me.  You can see her lovely work here.  We weren't able to get together so I could pick up the quilt, and were reluctant to trust it to the mail, so we just waited until more contact was safe.  Joey sent the quilt to me by her very kind nephew, and I am thrilled to have it home again, all quilted.

Here are the two of them together, the old one at the top of the photo and the new one at the bottom.

In other news, we are enjoying the beautiful summer weather.

Picking raspberries...

and eating them!  My baby buddy really needs a bib when eating the berries.

We're also having a wonderful time visiting with family.  Little Buddy took this photo of his baby brother, me, and (hurray!) my mom, who braved the crazy airline chaos to visit us this week.  Visiting with family is one of the greatest benefits of being fully vaccinated.

Little Buddy's photography skills are improving every day.  He took this snap of the garden too.

I still need to bind the new quilt, and I'm thinking about putting a replacement binding on the old one, too.  We may use the new quilt on a bed occasionally, but the old one is retired.

Have a lovely week, and happy sewing!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Cynthia at Oh Scrap