Pink Finish, Kits and Stash

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  How are your projects coming along?

Well, I'm a little late for pink month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, but I did manage to finish this Disappearing Nine Patch before the start of July, though, so I guess that's something.

Not really a pink girl myself, but I've been lucky enough to acquire scraps from friends and second hand sales.  Lots of these are really cute!

Here's the back, originally from the local chain shop.  It's a plain cotton, not a flannel, but the same print also came in flannel and I've had some of that.  The binding matches the cornerstones, and came from an antique mall in Indiana.

The tutorial I used for this quilt came from Jo's Country Junction, by Jo Kramer.  She calls it the Self Sashing Disappearing Nine Patch.  (Click HERE.)

I posted about how I was making this back in May, but here's a quick run through.

First, you make a 9 patch block.  The cornerstone fabric square goes in the center, the sashing fabric squares go in the middle of each side, and the other squares go in the corners.

Next, you slice the block in half vertically and horizontally.

Obviously, you don't want a sashing and cornerstone on the end of the row, or the bottom of the last row.  Jo Kramer solved that by ripping.  I hate ripping.  

Instead, I made the pieces on the right of the photo below for the last piece in each row except the bottom row.

On the bottom row, I sewed another row of squares with sashing between.

 

 

 

This one is a little bigger than normal for me, about 44 in. x 55 in.  It will be donated locally.

Do you ever have this problem?  I get to the stage of setting the rows of a quilt together, and then have to look around for something to sew for leaders and enders.  (I blame the amazing Bonnie Hunter lol.)  What if I had a few kits cut ahead, ready to go?  

Here's the first one, a Windmill pattern in an 8 in. block.

The kit includes the directions (from the amazing Nancy Queen of Scraps at our quilt guild), a finished block, and all the cut pieces for 19 more blocks.  I also included my notes with my plans for the set, borders, etc., so I can refresh my memory if I forget.

I cut 2 more quilts, a Four Patch and a Tumblers.  So I should be set for awhile!

As for quilting plans for the weekend, I need to cut these repro fabrics up for my hexies project before RSC blue month is completely over.  Most comes from my stash, but the lights and the first blue were purchased at a quilters rummage sale yesterday.

I did a very scary thing.  Last weekend, I inventoried the stash.  (Have you ever done this?)   I should say, I inventoried just the stash in the sewing room, which I use to make mostly children's quilts.  Yikes!  Mind boggling.  Just putting away the new acquisitions from this month took some work.  This shelf unit houses the 1 yard or so pieces on the bottom shelf, half yards on the next shelf up, and fat quarters on the shelf above that.  I had to add 3 more smaller boxes on top of the others to fit everything in.

I also had to add another box for the larger-than-one-yard pieces on the shelf in the closet.  I was so lucky to find so many cute blue fabrics.

I'm well set up to not buy much of anything new for the next year, but we'll see.  That's the plan anyway.

So, off to press and cut and sew and quilt!

Have a wonderful week!

Thanks for reading, and check out the quilt blogs at the linky parties below.

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

 

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