Rainbow Quilt in the Snow

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It's gently snowing this morning, and for the first time this season it's sticking.  We're not expected to get more than a couple of inches, but the weather is letting us know what is ahead.  It looked like a good place to put my latest donation quilt finish, a 16 patch baby-size quilt.

The back is a warm flannel print, and the batting is the new poly batt Joey brought me.  It was easy to quilt, and will be nice and warm for a child to snuggle under.  It hasn't been washed yet, but it's in line next, after the Thanksgiving tablecloths.

I used the same border fabric as the Crossroads quilt I finished at the end of October.  The colors are set as a sort of rainbow.

There are so many little "pictures" in the 2 in. finished squares.  I spy a monkey, a ladybug, a football, letters, a frog, a hedgehog, and even a chicken.

The 16 patch above is the 4th Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt I've made this year.  There is a fifth one not quite finished yet, and then there is this big pile of blocks, waiting to be assembled.  Yikes!  I am probably not going to get done by the end of the year.  Maybe I should make fewer blocks next year.  Or bigger quilts!

Remember this RSC quilt from last year?  I finished it in January, and later donated it to the GSAFE Quilt and Fiber Art Auction, which starts this Tuesday, Nov. 28.  GSAFE is an organization that works to help LGBT youth in schools.  Click HERE to learn more about GSAFE.

I have three quilts in the auction, and there are hundreds more items.  The theme is In Rainbowland, which really fits with the RSC quilts, I think!  If you're interested, you can click HERE to preview the auction items.  Bidding starts on Tuesday.  The goal is to raise $30,000.  By the way, my quilts are numbers 231, 236, and 237.
 

I hope everyone who celebrates had a happy Thanksgiving.  I know we did!  My little grandsons and I made the pies on Wednesday.  They stirred up the pumpkin filling and rolled out their pie crust (with help of course!)  Each of them made a small pie, and got to eat it after lunch as an early Thanksgiving treat.

What is this Guy doing?  Is he a robot, or an astronaut?  Believe it or not, there is a practical reason for Little Guy wearing this on his head.

The boys' school was closed for the holiday all week, so on Monday we took them to one of Hubby and Buddy's favorite stores, The Gem Shop, Inc. in Cedarburg.  We bought some small geodes, and everybody had to wear eye protection when Hubby cracked them open.  We had safety glasses for Buddy, but none for Little Guy, so Hubby put that plastic dome on his head.  He liked it so much he wore it off and on the rest of the day.

With Thanksgiving behind us, we're getting ready for the busy Christmas season.  I hope the boys will help us decorate this week, and we'll be getting out all the Christmas quilts.

Have a lovely week!

Cheers for reading this,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap 
 

A Little Quilt, and A Visit from a Friend

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

How's the weather where you live?  We have had lots of sunshine this week, and even a warm day or two, but the nights are below freezing.  Maybe that's why this old maple tree is finally giving up its leaves.

The back is a piece left over from a bigger quilt.  I had to add a strip down the middle to make it big enough.

I did get the little four patch top quilted and ready to donate.  I tried out some new poly batting, and I am very happy with the way it looks and feels.

You might remember this photo from last March!  My grandson is hugging a roll of higher loft poly batting, sent to me by my friend Joey.  There were TWO of these!  I nicknamed them Big Bertha and Gerta.  Unfortunately, I struggled using this weight of batting on my domestic sewing machine and with my limited skills.  Joey offered to trade a lighter weight of poly for these, since she can definitely use them on her long arm machine.

Somehow we managed to get Bertha into the back seat of Joey's car (thank goodness batting squishes!) and Gerta into the trunk.  It must have looked crazy to the neighbors, I hope we aren't on anybody's video.

Here's my new roll of batting.  I'm calling her Polly Esther.  She expanded a bit after I opened the plastic, but nothing like Bertha! 

Not only did Joey drive 3 hours to get here, bring me batting, and take Bertha and Gerta home, she also made this gorgeous thread/scrap catcher for me!  This is the prettiest one I've ever seen.

Here it is laid out.  I absolutely love it.  It might be too pretty to use, but it brightens up the sewing room, so I'm using it.  Thanks, Joey!

We had a lovely day when Joey was here.  We went to an antiques sale, and then out to lunch.  It's great to just have time to talk and laugh and catch up.

I'm doing a little piecing, like these Two Step blocks from Missouri Star, but I don't expect to get much done this week.  Thanksgiving is this Thursday, and I'm the main cook.  I'll be baking brown and serve rolls today to put in the freezer, and bread for the dressing either today or tomorrow.

This is the quilt guild Block of the Month for January, the Potato Chip block.  I'm way ahead of myself making these, but it's hard to stop!  (That's why it's named Potato Chip--you can't make just one!)
 

All the pieces for this block are 2.5 in. x 4.5 in. rectangles, and I have lots of them already cut.  So I may piece a few blocks while the turkey is roasting.

The little boys don't have school at all next week, so we'll find some things to do here.  Little Guy loved our visit to the library this week.  They always have interesting kid-friendly things for the kids to play with, like the pretend Farmers Market in the foreground, and the cardboard barn with chutes for "eggs" to go down.

One day this week was really warm for November, so I let the kids play on the playground for a bit after school.  Buddy is king of the mountain.  (Sorry for the poor quality photo.)

Thanksgiving is a lovely holiday, dedicated to being grateful for all our blessings.  I have so much to be grateful for!  Family and friends are at the very top of the list.

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate, and have a wonderful week!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

I'm thankful for these terrific bloggers and the linky parties they host!

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

 

 

Happy Quilt #3, and Breaking Down the Scraps

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It's a frosty morning here in Wisconsin, but the sun is shining and it might get up to 50 degrees F today.  No rain, so I'm hanging out the last of my Happy Blocks baby quilts made from my Rainbow Scrap Challenge squares.

I enjoyed finding a home for all these light-background novelty prints.  I hope the child who receives it enjoys it.

The back is this cute kids print.  A friend gave it to me knowing it would make a great back.  Thanks, Nancy!

One of the best parts of being a scrap quilter is all the variety!

Are you a scrap quilter?  Do bags and boxes and totes of scrap fabric set your heart pounding with excitement?  (Yeah, me too!)  Do friends, family, and random people give you scraps?  Do you actually BUY scraps to use in your quilting?  If so, you know what I mean by breaking down the scraps:  making them into useful pieces for quilts.  Lately I've been working on scraps I acquired at our guild's annual Silent Auction.

When I say "scraps", I mean pieces smaller than a fat quarter.  If they're big enough, say 6 in. wide or wider, I don't cut into them, I put them in the Big Scraps basket to cut as needed.  

The smaller ones take more work.  I'm talking about strips, small scraps, etc.  LOTS of etc.
 

I often find strips in scraps from other quilters, which is great.  If they're already a width I normally use, even better!  I can just store them in my personal Scrap Savers System, an idea made famous by the amazing Bonnie Hunter.  The scrap strips above are NOT widths I use, or are irregular cuts, etc. so they will have to be pressed and trimmed or cut down.

If the strips are a good width like these 2.5 in. ones above, but are short, I cut them into squares and rectangles. 

After strips, I tackle the small pieces, cutting these also into squares and rectangles.  It's a bit more tedious, so I do a small stack before working on other projects.

It sure feels good to see them neatly stacked, ready to sew!

Now for the Etcetera, which is what I call pieces sewn to other pieces.  Many of these are strip sets, already sewn together, or the ends of strip sets from which pieces have been cut by the original quilter.  There are also badly made blocks and parts of blocks, which I guess the quilter gave up on but couldn't throw away.

I often wonder what other people do with these.  If you use them, I'd love to know your method.

Here's a weird one:

The fabrics are cute.  How could I make this useful?

I cut this up into 3 hsts (2.5 in. x 2.5 in.), 2 squares (2 in. x 2 in.), and four small bits for crumb quilts.  There was a second one of these, and I did the same thing with it.

The most common etc. I find are 2.5 in. strips sewn together.  This is a great size that I use often, and cutting them apart would make them too small.  If at least one of the strips is something I know I'll use, I put them in a basket with a seam ripper, and rip them apart while watching TV.  Ripping is a drag, of course, but I hardly notice it when solving a mystery with Hercule Poirot or "baking" with the Great British Baking Show.

As I was sorting and cutting and ripping, I found lots of 2.5 in. squares, many with novelty prints.  Treasure!  I added some from my stash and cut alternate blocks of a gray print, to make this little 4 patch top:

 It was great to have these squares for leaders and enders while working on other projects.  I hope to get it quilted soon.

 Snicky is good company in the sewing room, although he hasn't quite left his life of crime behind.  I have got my eye on you, Furry Friend.

Halloween is over, but a patchwork ghost made an appearance in our house! Buddy is pretending to run away.  These guys crack me up.

I hope your week is ghost free and full of fun.  And to all the veterans everywhere, Happy Veterans Day!  And THANK YOU!!!

Thanks 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

 

Woven Bricks, Cat Block, and Japanese Quilts

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It's another finish for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, the first one using the Bricks blocks.  I'm calling it Woven Bricks.

It took me forever to decide how to put them together, until I decided on using only 6 colors and laid them out like this.  I've arranged them as if the colors are woven through the quilt.  Going across, we have green, light blue, and dark blue, and then they repeat.  Going down, it's red, orange, yellow, red, orange.

Most of the blocks are my fun novelty prints, and with only two seams per block they were dead easy to make.

I even added in the snake fabric.  Snakes are NOT my favorite animal, but these are sort of cute.  The border of the quilt is a colorful cat print I've used a lot for these donation quilts.  I'm down to a small strip of it now, sadly.

Here's the back, the last big piece of this frog prince print.  The binding is a solid green.

I have LOTS more brick blocks, so I may have to come up with other ways to set them.

I'm still thinking about next years RSC.  I tried this cat block out this week.

I got the pattern from American Patchwork & Quilting magazine, Oct. 2023 issue.  I changed it a little, leaving out the orange collars.  The block above was not really a success, there's not enough contrast between cat shape and background, but the pattern was easy.  Plus I got to use this fabric with a Snicky-type tuxedo kitten in it.

The contrast was much better in this block.  I think it might be fun to make these all next year. 

Speaking of Snicky, if you read last week's blog you know he's been in trouble lately for crimes against sewing and quilting.  This week, he's thrown himself on the mercy of the court (actually our laps) and is on supervised release.  He's shown here claiming some newly washed fabric I got at the guild silent auction.

My friend Debbie (on the left) and I went to a fabulous exhibit at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts.  It's called Quilts Japan:  The 16th Annual Quilt Nihon.  Click HERE for more information on the exhibit, which runs through Dec. 3, 2023.

Debbie is a quilt artist, and I'm really not, but there was plenty of eye candy for both of us!  The quilts exhibited are an amazing variety of modern and traditional styles.  I loved this one, made entirely of hexagons.

The quilt above was made from antique silk kimonos, and has lovely neat embroidery on the pieces.  Many of the quilts were also hand quilted (I think this one was, but not for sure).

This one was more modern, with different textural fabrics mixed in.  

There were also miniatures, appliqued quilts including Baltimore Album, and bright abstract quilts.

Quilt Nihon is always one of the most popular exhibits at the museum, and it's easy to see why.  If you get a chance to go, I highly recommend it.

Hope you had a good Halloween.  Our littlest grandsons sure did, in spite of the snow.  Buddy went as Luke Skywalker, and Little Guy was R2D2.  They have been so excited about it for just about the entire month of October.  Their parents made sure they wore warm clothes under their costumes.

It's fall for real here now, which means warm clothes for everyone.  Stay warm, and have a good week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these fabulous ladies:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap