Little 4 Patch, Book Blocks, and Rainbow Kitties

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

These little 4 patches are now a finished baby-sized quilt, ready for donation. 

I started with a set of 15 blocks I got at our quilt guild's silent auction (like the one with those hilarious cows), plus lots of loose squares.  I added in 2 in. squares from my stash, to make blocks that finish at 3 in.  (Quilting is the only place where 2 plus 2 equals 3.)  The finished quilt has 72 pieced blocks and 71 alternate blocks of the light fabric, set 11 x 13.

The border is this bugs fabric.  Bugs in real life are gross, but these guys are cute.  They're even smiling.

The back is this hand print fabric.  For the first time ever, I used a frankenbatt in this quilt, and it turned out okay.  Maybe this will help motivate me to make more frankenbatting, to clean up that part of the basement.

I love getting other people's scraps.  There are always prints I've never seen before, like these white cats on blue, or the koala on black.

Quilt guild was this week.  The amazing Nancy, Queen of Scraps, had a new community project for us, making a bookshelf quilt for an organization that helps needy kids get books.  Count me in!  I picked up two kits with background and brown "shelf" pieces, and added strips from my stash for the books. 

For this block, I chose "classic" prints, like paisleys, florals, and stripes.

 Of course I had to make a shelf of novelty print books.  These represent books about animals, which are always favorites for kids.  I think I made these too tall.  In hindsight, I think I would mix things up a bit more.  Maybe someday I'll make my own bookshelf quilt.  

Digging through the stash to find just the right fabrics has left the sewing room an absolute disaster, so straightening up is top of the to-do list today.

Does this ever happen to you?  I've decided on yet another Rainbow Scrap Challenge project.

At the end of last year, I saw this pattern in American Patchwork and Quilting, Oct. 2023 issue.  It was made with black and orange cats for Halloween.  I made a few blocks to test the pattern and loved them, but wasn't sure what I was going to do with them.  Now I know!  I'm going to make Rainbow Kitties this year for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I need to make the green ones for January, but I can catch up okay.  I hate to admit, I've had this happen even much later in the year!

Hey!  What's that lump in the bed?

It's Snicklefritz, getting cozy on a cold day.  Two days this week, the temps were in the 50s F.  Yesterday we had snow, which is still on the ground.  Weather is weird this year.

My lovely Amaryllis is blooming again, and appropriately red for the last Saturday in February.  You can see the dusting of snow on the bushes outside the window.

Even though we've got colder weather, we know we're heading in the right direction.  Spring is (eventually) coming.  In the meantime, we can stay cozy inside (like Snicklefritz!) and keep doing things we love.  Like quilting!

Have a lovely week, and thanks for visiting!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

 Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

 

What A Week

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for visiting!

Last week started out great.  On Sunday I went to Madison to visit with my friend Debbie C.  We had a lovely lunch and lots of conversation, and then went to Blue Bar Quilt Shop, where I bought these fat quarters.  Aren't they fun? Check it out, there's even pickleball fabric!  It's a full service shop with a modern vibe,  and even has an area displaying modern/art quilts.  We had a wonderful afternoon.

Debbie even gave me novelty fabric!  Astronauts in space will make a great border or back or alternate fabric.  Mustaches are so much fun.  Buddy laughed when he saw them.  The white on white piece has tiny dinosaurs. 
 

But wait, there's more!  Debbie also had a box of books she was planning to donate, and she generously invited me to choose any that I wanted!  I chose a spinning book, a knitting book, and this quilt book, A Practical Guide to Patchwork, from the Victoria and Albert Museum, published in 1987.

I was lucky enough to visit the Victoria and Albert several years ago, when there was an amazing exhibit of palampores, like the photo above.  They were embroidered covers, usually with no quilting or lining originally, made in the 1700s typically in India for export to Europe.  

The V&A has many (most?) of their quilts online for viewing at an excellent web site.  The quilt above has a total of 14 images.  (Click HERE to go to the Collections web page.To see the palampores, just type palampore into the search box.)

Here's my favorite from the book.  This is the center of the quilt.  The commemorative printed panel celebrates the Duke of Wellington's victory at the Battle of Vittoria in 1813.  Underneath it is a hand embroidered verse and the names John and Elizabeth Chapman, September 19, 1829.  It was the date of their wedding.  (If you'd like to read the text of the inscription or see the other photos, click HERE to go to the Victoria & Albert Museum collections page.  The museum number for this quilt is T.428-1985.)

This is the back.  The top was never finished, and still contains remnants of the papers from the 1790s on used to hand piece it.  In America we might call the pattern Drunkard's Path or Solomon's Puzzle, but in England it is known as Steeplechase or Jockey's Cap.

I got a little sewing done this week.  Two of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects got some new red additions.

I finished the last 3 green grocery-receipt strips, and got two red ones done.  I make sure to save the receipts every week so I can sew these little scraps on them.  Weirdly it's kind of a reward for getting the groceries.

I'm still working on red string blocks, and will probably make a bunch more.

These little squares will be part of a pieced border.  Hope I did the math right!

As you can see, no quilting happened this week.  There were days when I didn't sew at all.

It was a Murphy's Law kind of week.  Our Buddy was sick on Monday, so he was here with us.  Nothing serious, he was better by the time he went home, so we're thankful for that.  On Tuesday morning, we woke up to a cold house.  The furnace was out, and had to be repaired.  Luckily, the repair person came the same day, and we had heat by lunchtime.  Also on Tuesday, I took my sick old dog to the vet, and she has been needing extra care.  Thursday morning I went to the doctor for a routine blood test.  Easy and quick (and not serious), but my morning sewing time evaporated.  

Finally on Friday morning I got into the sewing room and got things organized again.  I'm really hoping for a peaceful (and pieceful!) weekend!

Did you have a good Valentine's Day?  For me it was the brightest spot in the weekday chaos.  Little Guy and I made cookies, Hubby bought chocolates, and my little boys gave me these:

The happy lady bug was made by Buddy during his party at school.  He gave it to me in the car on the way home.  Little Guy made the picture with stickers, also at school.

No matter what happens, I never lose sight of how lucky I am.

What's going on in your world?  I hope you had time for the things you love to do.  Like quilting!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Angela at So Scrappy

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

 

 

 

 

 

With A Little Help From My Friends

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

More bricks today!  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge just keeps giving.  I finally have all the Bricks blocks from last year sewn into tops.  Just one more top to quilt (next week?  Maybe!).  

This one is made from just pink and purple bricks.

As you can see, we got some blue skies and sunshine this week, which I am so grateful for.  There is still a lot of winter left, of course, but the sunshine makes everything better.

The Bricks blocks are a great place for fun novelty fabrics.  I think the Valentine dogs print came from a batch of scraps my friend Debby O. sent a while back.

Check out these exotic-looking tigers!  They came from the stash of the amazing Preeti Harris at Sew Preeti Quilts (Click HERE) as a prize for making a Positivity Quilt.

This llama fabric is my favorite!  I was grumbling a little about not having many pink scraps, and my friend Joey sent me a whole bag of them!

Here's the back, with lots of sweet bunnies!  This big piece was in an overflowing basket of mostly novelty print scraps given to me by the lovely ladies in our quilt guild.

Red is our color of the month for the RSC, and there are so many great fabrics!  Have you ever seen anything cuter than these little ninjas?  This fabric came from my friend Debbie C. in Madison.
 

Here it is with the rest of the red Stretched Stars blocks.

A few red rail fence blocks happened this week too.

I have met so many wonderful, fun, kind, sharing people through quilting!  I'll bet you have, too.  Their friendship is like sunshine in winter.

Here's more sunshine!  My youngest grandson Little Guy is playing with trains in the children's section of the library.  We had a great morning, and brought home almost more books than I could carry.  Our cozy reading time after lunch is a highlight of the day for both of us.

Happy Valentine's Day this coming Wednesday to all who celebrate.  And Happy Gal-entines Day, too!  Love and friendship is worth celebrating.

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

 

Bricks and Blocks and Frankenbatting

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for visiting!

It's another gray Saturday today, just normal for winter here, so I apologize in advance for the photos.  At least the snow is finally melting!  I finished this Bricks quilt this week, made from 2023 Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.

The blocks were fun to make all last year, and great for any kind of prints, including novelties.  I have two more bricks tops ready to quilt.  I was inspired to make these by Sara at the My Sewing Room blog.  (Click HERE.)  Thanks, Sara!

This is the backing, lots and lots of colorful dots.  The binding is more of my solid color "big scraps" that I'm using up.

Here's the border, a puzzle print.  I like using multicolor fabrics on the borders of bright scrap quilts.

Plus, we really love jigsaw puzzles around here!  I like to have one in progress on the kitchen table.  Hubby and I can work on it when time permits, and Buddy is pretty good at putting pieces in.  He has sharp eyes.

We finished this one after Christmas.  Hubby gets absolutely obsessed.

I loved getting out the red scraps for February's RSC color of the month.  They're bright even on a dull day.  So far I'm only making 4 of these Potato Chip blocks in each color, but more could happen.

The 3-D Flying Geese are so fast to make.  Still not sure what I'm doing with them.

I've been trying to straighten up my quilt supplies storage in the basement.  I'm basically a student of the Sloth method of tidying up (very, very slowly), but some stuff is glaringly obvious and needs help right now.

Like this pile of batting scraps.

I'm a long time quilter and kind of a miser about quilt stuff, and I've saved batting scraps of all sizes for years.  It's finally started breaking out of the bin and laundry basket, and I have to pass it every time I go down there.  I was inspired to finally deal with it by Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, who tackled her own batting scrap oversupply (Click HERE).  

There were all sorts of strips in this mess.  I kept the ones that were at least 8 in. wide, and tossed the short skinny tangled ones.  I will use these wider strips for quilt-as-you-go projects.  And now I can easily find them.

All the larger scraps got measured and tagged while I watched a Miss Marple episode on PBS.  The next step is putting the large scraps together to make batts big enough for baby quilts, since that's what I mostly make.  We call this "Frankenbatting".

I'm putting the batting pieces together with this Batting Seam Tape, which is amazingly easy.  You just butt the edges together and iron it on.  If/when I run out of it, I can overcast the batting pieces together by hand or machine.  The seams need to be flat, of course, so there's no bump in the quilt.

I have two batts done already, and it's making me feel so thrifty!  It's not like I desperately need this batting, as I have a whole roll of lovely soft poly, but I don't see any sense in either throwing it away or storing it forever.

In other news, our youngest grandsons had the day off school yesterday (conferences), so we went to the mall.  We took these pictures at a display in the book store.

Little Guy was not quite tall enough!  Walking through the mall was good exercise for us, and the boys got to go to the Lego Store and to look around at Build A Bear (just in case they want to go there for their birthdays).  

Snicklefritz the cat is still on the job, supervising my work and testing tops and pieces for softness and nap-ability.  What would I do without him?

And what would I do without you?  Thanks for reading this, and have a lovely week!

Cheers, 

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Cynthia at Oh Scrap