A Baby Quilt, String Blocks, and a Fruitathon

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Today's quilt is brought to you by the color purple.  It's actually a kit cut by the lovely ladies at my quilt guild from donated fabric.  I guess you could call it a charm square quilt, since all the squares are cut at 5 inches.  It will be donated to a child.
 

The focus fabric is this one with the children.  Aren't these kids cute?  It's an Easter print.  The kids are dressed up, and holding bunnies (real and chocolate), baskets of eggs, ducks, plates of cookies, etc.  There is even a kid in a duckie costume.

The raspberry pink binding fabric was originally intended as the border.  I added a light purple border with hearts and vines instead, and used the pink for the binding.

On the back is this cupcake fabric, plus a strip of the light purple hearts and vines print to make it wide enough.  I got the cupcake fabric at the museum sale (blogged about last week), and it's already come in handy.

Blue month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge had me making string blocks this week.  I really LOVE making string blocks!  They go fast, look cute, and use up scraps that wouldn't work for anything else.

I still have this much left, so more string squares are in my future.  I'm piecing my blocks on cloth foundations and they finish at 6 in.x 6 in.

A good hot iron is essential when piecing any quilt blocks, but especially ones like strings that need to be pressed often.  I have had lots of trouble with irons in the past (can you relate?).  One brand new one didn't even last two weeks!  I bought this one at a big rummage sale about a month ago, just as a back up.  It's a Sunbeam Ironmaster, and it must be old since it was made in the U.S.  The volunteers at the sale had marked it with a Tested label, which meant it worked, so I took a chance and bought it for $1.  

I am THRILLED with it!  And I never say that about an iron.  It gets beautifully hot, doesn't shut off, and glides across the seams.  I hope it doesn't quit on me, but even if it does I've already got more than my money's worth out of it.

One more rainbow kitty block happened!  I just can't stop making them.
 

In other news, it's been a fruitful week.

On Tuesday, I went to the U-Pick farm and picked all these lovely strawberries.  We've had more rain than usual this year, which affected the crop some.  The berries were plentiful, but there were also lots of rotten ones.

A nice lady at the strawberry patch told me about a truck at the local Fleet Farm selling peaches from Georgia.  So of course I bought a box on the way home.  According to the instructions, the peaches should be laid out like this for a couple of days until they are soft.  It took up half the kitchen table, but we worked around them (all of us love fresh peaches).  By Friday they were lovely and ripe, and easy to peel.  

I have been canning for days.  I got three batches of jam from the strawberries, plus 3 pints of berries in the freezer, plenty to eat, and two batches of strawberry sherbet.  The peaches turned into 12 pints canned, 2 quarts in the freezer, plenty to eat, and enough to make a small batch of peach jam later today.

Now that the fruit-a-thon is almost over, I can get back to quilting! 

A couple of weeks ago, my hubby took a 20 mile hike sponsored by a local group.  It rained all day that Saturday and they hiked through mud, but he persevered.  When this guy sets a goal, he meets it!  This photo was taken by a professional photographer hired by the group.
 

Have a lovely week!  I hope you have time for all the things you love to do.

Thanks 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

Rainbows and Blue Skies

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Here's my small Rainbow Rails quilt, finished just in time for Pride Month, and hanging out on my front porch.

I got the pattern from American Patchwork & Quilting magazine, issue #188, seen above.  Of course I didn't make it exactly the way the pattern says (do I ever?) but it was great inspiration.  Plus it used up lots of my light/low volume strips and solid colored strips.

How do you like this artistic swirl?  It's brought to you by Snicky the cat, almost seen here in the middle.

It was fun putting all these light prints in one quilt.  They usually get to be the backgrounds, hardly ever the starring roles.

The back is this Kim Schaefer fabric with lots of cute short words.  I finished up with a rainbow binding of more leftover strips.

Blue month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is nearly half over!  Yikes, time goes so fast!

Some blue rail fence blocks got sewn up.  I'm enjoying using both light and dark blues this month, it worked out well in these blocks.

These strips sewn on grocery receipts use all kinds of blue crumbs.  I have WAY more dark blue scraps than light blue, so I just mixed some light blue pieces in the dark blue strips and made one with just light blues.  Still not sure what I'm making with these.  Hope I figure it out by the end of the year!

So, this happened!  Again!  It was the big annual sale at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts.  Fellow quilters, you would have loved it!  I stocked up, as I guess you can see.  The column on the left is flannel, the rest are regular cottons.  It took me all day yesterday to wash and fold it all.

In the last several years, I have found that I really like buying and using second hand fabric in my quilts.  For one thing, it is SO much cheaper, which I appreciate since I'm giving away 90% of the quilts I make.  Also, it's like a treasure hunt finding kid-friendly fabric at flea markets, yard sales, etc., and I love when I find good pieces and "rescue" them.  It's recycling, right?

I'm going to try something new.  From June 2024 (now) to June 2025, I'm making it my mission to use mostly second hand fabric.  (It's not like I don't have any, lol!)  If I need to buy any new fabric, it will just be what I need for a specific project.  No stash building at the quilt store.  Wish me luck!

In other news, we had a perfect day at the ball park.  Hubby and I joined our eldest daughter, son-in-law, grandson and granddaughter at Sunday's Kenosha Kingfish game.  It was so much fun.

Even better than the game was the pregame show by this wonderful gymnastics group.  Our lovely and talented granddaughter Miss E. is on the far left as they're warming up.

Our weather here has been lovely, and we appreciate it so much after our cold winters.  I'm going to get a glass of iced tea and sit out on the porch.

Have a lovely week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Cats and Stars and Potato Chips

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

I've been spinning the treadle wheels this week, happily piecing blocks from scraps for my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects.

It's blue month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and boy have I got blue scraps!  It's fun making these potato chip blocks.

We're doing any/all shades of blue this time, so I got to use my medium blue scraps as well as light and dark.  All these pieces came from my box of 2 in. x 3.5 in. rectangles.  I wish I could say I used up most of them.  Actually, I didn't make a dent.  Can you tell I love blue?

Dark and medium blue stretched stars were pieced from charm squares.  Did you catch Marvin the Martian?  I always liked him in the cartoons.  Which is weird because he was always trying to blow up our planet.  I guess I knew Bugs Bunny would prevail.

These stretched stars are on the lighter side.

Not a big fan of caterpillars in real life, but on fabric they're kind of fun.  Maybe just a bit creepy?

Cats are never creepy!  Ok, maybe they're not blue either.  I'm thinking more of stuffed animals with these blocks.

I honestly cannot tell what color the background is on this Laurel Burch print.  Blue or purple?  What do you think?  When I put it next to purples it looks blue, and vice versa when I put it with blues.

 It's raining cats and dogs on this print!  The cat is the smart one here, wearing flippers and a snorkel.

There were a few more pink cats to finish from last month.  I just love that Hello Kitty background fabric.

I'm calling this whole project Rainbow Kitties.  These rainbow fabric kitties wanted to be made right now, for Pride Month.  I might find a few more rainbow fabrics as I go along.

The grand kids are done with school and are here more, which is part of the reason I'm not getting much sewing done.  I'm okay with that, they're important.  This week they built this castle and village, and we're leaving it up til next week.

They've got everything, from dragons and monsters to minions and smurfs.  I'm glad they found something absorbing to play inside, since it's been raining a lot.  Even when we go outside, everything is wet and muddy.  Better weather is on the way, I hope.

In other news, I cut the rhubarb and made a pie.  Rhubarb always makes it feel like summer.

How is your month coming along?  I always look forward to seeing everybody's projects at the linky parties.  Have a lovely week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Cats and Dogs and Elephants, Oh My

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Hey!  Who's under this quilt?  I just finished it this morning!

Oh yeah, I forgot, Snicky has a side job as a quilt quality control inspector.  That is of course in addition to his regular jobs of holding down our laps and waking us up at 5:00 a.m.  He's a busy guy.
 

I got carried away making these Uneven Nine Patch blocks last year for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  This is the second small quilt from these, and it uses 30 blocks.  The first quilt used 20.  There are still 51 more blocks!  What on earth was I thinking?

All of the blocks I chose for this quilt have animal prints in the center square.  There are pets, like cats and dogs and rabbits, zoo animals, farm animals, insects, birds, fish, dinosaurs, and sea mammals.  The blocks alternate dark and light centers. 

There are even animals on the back!  You might recognize this as "country look" fabric from the 1980s/1990s.  It's good cotton fabric, and I'm happy to have found a use for it.

Now I'll get the quilt washed and donated to a children's charity.  And then figure out what to do with the rest of the blocks.

The RSC color for June is blue (any blue!) which is great for me because I have so many blue scraps.  I'm just getting started making June's blocks, but these 3-D flying geese are easy and fast so I did them first.

Catch up is still happening with pink blocks.  I didn't have very many pink crumbs, so I only made two of these strips sewn on grocery receipts.

I may not be a big fan of regular pink fabric (yet?), but I have always loved double pink reproduction prints.  These hexies and triangles are cut with the Accuquilt cutter and are fast to sew.  I'm starting to get anxious to see all the colors together in the quilt, with those white stars peeking out.

A couple of months ago, a lovely lady (who used to be my son's English teacher) contacted our quilt guild about a local charity called Ebony Vision.  They have mentoring programs and a free lending library, with special activities for children. (Click HERE for an article about the organization.) Of course that caught my attention as I'm a retired school librarian.  We made a couple of quilts for them to use as a fund raiser, and now we're making book pillows.  The pillow covers (as seen above) have a deep pocket for books, lapped back flaps for easy insert and removal of the pillow, and a handle for carrying.

Our goal is 40 pillow covers done by our next meeting.  The pillows to go inside have already been purchased.  I couldn't attend the sewing day at the guild, but the amazing Colleen dropped off two kits plus instructions.  Those are the blue and green ones.  I also made the other two from guild fabric plus my fabric.

I had to include this red fabric with dinos and books!

There was some non-sewing activity here this week.  Little Guy "graduated" from preschool!  With all the excitement we couldn't get him to hold up the certificate for the photo, but it was such fun seeing the program the kids put on, with lots of happy singing. 

All the kids told the teachers what they wanted to be when they grew up.  

Here's what Little Guy said:

Those big trucks are really exciting.  Plus the man who collects the garbage in our neighborhood is very friendly, so maybe that's what influenced his choice.  I just want him to be happy in his work, whatever it is.

Have a happy start to a new month, with time for things you love to do.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap