Strings and Things

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Is it windy where you live today?  This was the best shot I could get of this quilt top on the clothesline.  (My hair was blown around too.  No photos of that!)

Here's what it looks like inside the house, calmly lying on the floor.  As you can see, it's a string quilt, made from blocks I sewed last year for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

I had so much fun making these blocks!  String quilts are addictive, at least for me.  I love sewing these skinny strips into something useful.  There are 54 blocks that finish at 6 in. each.   I set them in 9 rows of 6 each.  

This is my third quilt with last year's string blocks.  The colors chain across the quilt diagonally, which turned out to be the best way to use up the limited amount of remaining blocks.  There are still a few blocks left in the bin, but they don't go together well, and will have to wait for more string blocks to be made.

The border is the blue fabric.  The words on it are sounds cars make, like vroom and beep and honk and even ah-ooh-ga.  I bought it at a going-out-of-business sale at a quilt shop.  

The top is approximately 42 in. x 60 in., and will be donated to the Children's Advocacy Center.

Here's a quick look at the back.  I piece my string blocks on cotton fabric instead of the more usual paper.  I just hate tearing off the paper, but I'm happy to recycle ugly fabric, so this works for me.

This week's RSC blocks are the Highland Fling ones, from the book Dessert Roll Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott.  I wanted a good contrast between the center square and the outer triangles so I used white-based neutral squares, all with at least some yellow in them.  

By the way, I looked this block up in Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.  The construction is the same as #2560 which is called Windmill or The Radio Windmill.  The color placement is different.  It's also similar to Arabic Lattice, but with a square in the center instead of a 4 patch.  I'm going to start calling them my Radio Windmill blocks.

This one is my favorite!

This was a busy week!  Saturday we went to our grandson Little Guy's birthday party, and had a great time hanging out with family.

Doesn't he look grown up?  This was the only picture I managed to take.  I always get caught up in the moment and forget.

Monday my friend Joey came to visit.  We had a good time chatting and cutting up fabric.  And I still didn't take any pictures!

She also gave me a sack of ready-made binding.  Our quilt guild has a challenge to make a mile of binding for our charity quilts.  I'm getting this batch ready for this week's guild meeting.  The first one is 12 yards long!  Thanks, Joey!

Our grandson Buddy was sick for three days with a cold, low fever, and a cough, so he was here with us instead of going to school.  He was feeling well enough by the third day to get bored with watching TV, definitely on the mend. At the end of the day Thursday Little Guy was starting to come down with it too.  (Doesn't it always happen this way?)  I did all my sewing on Friday, when the kids were home with their mom.  Thank goodness those string blocks were already sewn.

Little Miss Lizzy loves sitting in the living room window, watching the birds.  

The grass is still brown, but there are buds on the big tree in the backyard.  Spring is coming!

I hope you're having a lovely week, whatever the weather.  Happy Quilting!

Thanks for reading this!

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy