Hot Wheels! Dare to Be Rad!

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Yahoo, the grandkids are back in school, and I have more time for sewing!  I actually got a quilt finished this week.

Does this blue block explain the title?  It says Dare to be Rad! with the Hot Wheels symbol underneath.  Our quilt guild was given LOTS of Hot Wheels fabric scraps by a gentleman who once ran a fabric shop.  My friend The Amazing Colleen thought I would enjoy doing something with them, and of course she was right!

There are five different Hot Wheels prints, and two colorways of most.  To add more color and variety, I mixed in whatever car theme fabric I had, including wheels and tools, plus other vehicle prints.

The blocks are Bricks, with a center cut 3.5 in. x 6.5 in., and two outside pieces (in this case, dark blue) cut 2 in. x 6.5 in.  Easy and fun to make, and a good way to use the novelty prints I love.  The borders are a light blue Hot Wheels print.  They were already cut by the original owner.  All I had to do was trim them down and cut the right lengths.

The quilt is 46 in. x 52 in., so of course I had to piece the back.  Luckily I had another race car print, and some Tonka Truck print also donated by the same person.

Tiny little race cars print!  I have been looking for a home for this fabric for a long time.

Most of the quilting is my usual serpentine stitch grid, courtesy of Mrs. Pfaff, but I quilted parallel lines in the border to make a road for Hot Wheels type cars.  Vroom vroom!

These remind me of my brother.  He loved Hot Wheels cars, and used to always have one he was playing with, running it on the carpet or the couch or even on me while I was trying to read!

The blue fabric came from the sale at the museum last June.  There was one "regular" half yard or so piece, and 15 pieces cut into these weird triangles.  Long before I got to the binding, the triangles were all I had left, so I cut the binding from them.  For the binding I sewed together 13 short pieces.  Miraculously only one of the seams ended up in a corner.

I do have one question.  When did people stop saying things were "rad"?  1990s?  1980s?  Just how old is this fabric anyway?  It is in very good condition, so no worries there.

In other news, Colleen also gave me a scrap bag at our August guild meeting.   All the pieces were novelty prints!!!  This is the gallon bag dumped out on a table.

And this is all the pieces from the bag cut into either strips, squares or rectangles.  I just couldn't wait to start sewing some of these up.

Lots of the pieces were 6.5 in. long, and 4 or so inches wide.  I trimmed them to 3.5 x 6.5, just like the Hot Wheels fabrics, and made bricks with white sides.  I made 22 of these blocks from the new scrap bag pieces.  I'm adding in leftover bricks from the Hot Wheels quilt plus a few other stray rectangles to make the 42 I need for a new bricks quilt.

It is dangerous to give me new-to-me scraps and more time to sew.  I will definitely start new projects! I was watching a YouTube video from Merry Mabel Market about making half log cabin blocks from random scraps.  (By the way, I'm loving her videos!) I can't do random, but it did start me thinking about how cute half log cabin blocks would be made from these new scraps.  I drew up this block to use 2.5 in. strips.  

My blocks start with a 3.5 in. square, and each "round" is two strips 2.5 in. wide, in the same color.   I mixed the new scraps with my strips on hand.  The blocks are 9 in. finished, and I love them!  If I can stand to wait until January (iffy) I will make these for next year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

This year's RSC is almost over!  I finished the August aqua blocks, and it will soon be time to start setting this year's blocks together.  These are the Thrifty ones.

This is my favorite block this week!  The cat in the middle looks properly smug, crazy minions are popping up in the corner, and that yellow fish has a cheeky grin!

I'm going to go find my own properly smug cats for a cuddle or two, and then get some lunch.  Have a happy quilty week, everyone!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these fabulous link party hostesses:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge