Little Brick Ladders, Radio Windmills, and More Scraps

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Not a great week for stitching around here, but I did get this little top sewn.  I'm glad I took the pictures yesterday when it was sunny since we're having a light rain this morning, but the wind was too wild for clothesline photos yesterday so I laid it on the grass.

There are lots of different reasons for starting a new donation quilt.  Sometimes I want to try an exciting new pattern, or use a specific fabric.  This time I needed a leader/ender project, and wanted to relieve the overcrowding in this box of rectangles that I call Little Bricks.  My little bricks measure 2.5 in. x 3.5 in., and are cut from scraps.  (BTW, this photo shows the box AFTER I made the quilt!  More Little Bricks quilts are in my future.)

I call this block Little Brick Ladder.  The pattern I'm using here is a variation on others I've seen in books and online.  It's similar to a rail fence.  Each block has 3 of the little bricks plus two rectangles on the sides cut from a light fabric.  The side pieces measure 2 in. x 6.5 in. cut.  The blocks themselves are 6 in. finished.

I have LOTS of one-way-design prints in my scraps.  It's really common in the novelty prints I love.  For this quilt, I made nearly half of the blocks orienting the prints horizontally, and nearly the other half orienting them vertically, with a few of the blocks using only prints that could look well either way.  The light jelly bean print came from the museum sale last month.  (There were 5 whole yards of it, so you can expect to see it in my quilts again!)

The border is this aqua Dr. Seuss print.  I'm trying to get out of my rut of dark blue borders on everything, so I was glad I had enough of this fabric left.

I will be quilting this top myself.   Piecing is easy to do when life is busy, but quilting the tops takes more time.  I am really hoping I can get something done this weekend.

Purple piecing is fun!  Purple is my favorite color, and it's the July color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I had a nice little bundle of scraps for the big triangles on these Radio Windmill blocks, but it was harder to find light charm squares with purple in them for the centers.  I actually used one fabric twice.  Can you guess which one?

Yes, you're right, it was the pickle ball print!  I actually bought that fat quarter in a quilt shop!

But this block was my favorite this week.  The outside triangles are one of my very favorite Kaffe Fassett prints.  The merry go round horses print was from a scrap I found in the basement clean out and immediately reclaimed.

Look at all this!!!  A friend gave me a wonderful gift this week (Thank you so much, Joey!)  We exchanged boxes at the museum meeting last Saturday.  I gave her some vintage block sets etc. from the basement cleanout, and she gave me a box loaded with wonderful prints for the kid quilts (above).

But wait, there's even more!  I made a scrap rainbow with the smaller pieces just to show them off.

Still more!  Light scraps on the left, big scraps on the right!  

Plus a giant bag of strings!  I'm still going through them.  These are bright ones I've sorted out.  There might be some purple in there!  Thanks again, Joey!  I can hardly wait to start sewing these up!

Even though we had cloudy skies this week, we still got outside.  Buddy was challenging himself on the Monkey Bars ...

and Little Guy was following along as always.  They're wearing their 4th of July shirts just because they like them.

Our shy kitten Lizzy is still getting used to the boys being here every day, and she's very interested in what they are doing.  While they were playing, she ran into the room and stole a little plastic chicken, taking it to her lair in the basement.  The boys laughed and said she could keep it.  After the kids left on Wednesday, she checked out the rest of their toys and curled up in the corral.

We are having a good summer here.  The summer produce has been lovely, with black raspberries now stacked in the freezer and peaches waiting for me to peel and can them.  I hope I can get more sewing done this week, but if not it's okay, it will wait for me.

Have a lovely week, whatever the weather brings.

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Angela at So Scrappy

DrEAMi Bordered Square, a Heart, and Purple Blocks

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Do you keep a list of quilts you plan to make?  I do.  I even have it written on a whiteboard in my sewing room.  Somehow I never keep to that schedule, because something always comes along to make me drop everything and make it (a condition called DrEAMi that often afflicts quilters). Bordered Square, above, is one of those DrEAMi projects. This top was so much fun to make, it didn't even seem like patch-work.  

The inspiration came from this book, Quilts from the Heart, by Karin Renaud.  I bought it at the Humane Society rummage sale at the end of May.  The book is filled with great ideas, but the Bordered Square pattern sent me straight to my boxes of cut squares to start making blocks.

The blocks are simple to make.  The center is a 4.5 in. cut square, surrounded by 12 squares cut 2.5 in.  All the centers are novelty prints.  The blocks in the book used novelty prints with darker backgrounds.  I used lighter ones instead for more contrast.

I liked the author's use of random bright squares as cornerstones.  Instead of solid white, I used a print for the sashing because it was more fun.  It's a heart print, and I always like to include hearts in the donation quilts I make for kids.

I love having a good pattern and inspiration for a quilt, but also making some small changes to do it my way.  My quilt has 30 blocks instead of 20, and I also skipped the inner border.  I will be donating the top to the Children's Advocacy Center in Milwaukee.  The organizer will quilt it, and it will be given to a child.

Check out the border!  I got this colorful kitty fabric at the museum sale last month and just loved it.  It seemed perfect for this quilt, but I only had just over half a yard, and I was afraid it wouldn't be enough.  I did the math several times but didn't really trust myself (not a math person sadly).  

It worked!  All I have left of the kitty fabric is one 2.5 in. strip, two 3.5 in. squares, and this heart block I made with the last of it.

Purple blocks were happening here for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I can't wait to see everybody else's blocks in the linky parties.  Here are mine!

Bright Hopes:

And Thrifty:

And my favorite block of the week:

There's a flying girl frog in the center square!  Of course it's my favorite!

The stacks of RSC blocks are getting taller!  I'm looking forward to making them into tops.

In other news, I've been spending lots of time with my youngest grandsons this summer.

They're "helping" me pick black raspberries.  Not much help since they eat all they pick, but it's a great snack for them and something they look forward to.

Buddy and I have been going to the park every morning while Little Guy is at a playground program.  In the photo above, he's testing his American Ninja Warrior skills.

This morning, I'm going to a meeting at the Quilt Museum, so I'd better get going.  Have a lovely week, everyone.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

A Pink UFO, Fan Quilting, and Purple Bow Ties

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

This is my "not-finish" for this week.

It's just a top, but this is a big step for this project.  It's a UFO, started by a nice man who donated TONS of fabrics, tops, blocks, and projects to our quilt guild.

This is what we started with.  The Amazing Colleen from our charity committee handed it off to me (along with other projects that may also get finished eventually).  There were nine blocks and some narrow sashing strips.  The blocks were about 11 inches square.  BTW, that's Lizzy the kitten in the corner of the photo, escaping from being photographed.

After taking off the sashing, I squared up the blocks and added new sashing and borders from this lovely bird print.  My friend Debbie C. spotted a whole bolt of it for me at a sale in Madison last January, and it has really come in handy.

Before I hand this one over to one of our volunteer long arm quilters, I will make a backing from the same bird print, and a binding from a slightly darker pink.

Several times I have mentioned my dislike for pink.  Working on this quilt made me realize it isn't all pinks, just that very pale, sort of salmon shade.  It's not something I would choose for a quilt I'm keeping, but I can work with it for charity stuff.

We had a lovely Independence Day yesterday.  It rained in the morning, but cleared up with a nice breeze.  We went to the parade, which was the familiar and wonderful small town parade with fire engines, pom pom girls, and the high school marching band.  A few politicians were there, but no political floats which was okay with me.  July 4 is a day to remember what we have in common.

Later in the day, I started quilting my Constitution quilt.  I'm doing a Baptist Fan on my domestic machine, which is challenging, mostly because of marking the lines on both light and dark fabrics.

It's purple month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!  How are your purples coming along?  With such a busy week I went right for my easiest blocks, the 8 in. Bow Ties.

My favorite is the ghost print one.  The ghosts are reading ghost stories and eating popcorn.  There are more fun purple prints now that purple is seen as a Halloween color.

This fish print had a cute selvedge.  It says, "Make all your rainy day bright!"  I like the sentiment, but I'm not sure about the English used.  Thankfully I'm not the grammar police.  (I leave that to my eldest daughter lol.)

Look who hopped up into the cabinet!  I was cleaning it, and turned my back for a second.  Naughty Snicky!  I didn't fuss at him, though, just laughed and got the camera.  Why do cats always test spaces to see if they can fit?

He definitely fits on Little Guy's lap.  They've been hanging out together more, since Buddy has been at wrestling camp the last 3 weeks.  Buddy will be here starting Monday, and I know Little Guy is glad.  We'll do some fun things together.

One of our daily activities will be picking raspberries in our garden.  This is today's haul, the trickle that starts the flood.  I love this time of year!

I hope you have a lovely week, doing 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

Cynthia at Oh Scrap