Two Little Quilts, A Big Sale, and Bright Hopes

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

I like a challenge.  My wonderful quilt guild has been having several challenges lately, and I was glad to participate.  This particular challenge was called Dots and Zigzags.  We were given paper bags with a small amount of zigzag print and dotted print, both in the same color.  The object was to use the fabrics to make anything we'd like, and bring it to the January meeting.

You guessed it, my fabrics were pink!  Which made it an extra challenge for me, since I'm not the biggest fan of pink.  Both fabrics in the bag were a kind of salmon color. We could add any fabrics we liked to the ones in the bag.  At first I was kind of stuck on bright vs. salmon vs. light pink.  Did they actually go together?  Then I found the green print in my stash, and noticed it had ALL the pinks in it.  That helped!  I even put the salmon-y zigzags next to a bright dotted print.

Of course I made a baby quilt!  It's just where my mind goes lol.  I pieced a row of light pink zigzags and another of dark pink zigzags and added the strips.  Simple quilting and voila.

The challenge entries were displayed at our last meeting, and I was blown away by their creativity and workmanship!  I also had no idea there were so many zigzag prints in existence.  My little quilt will be donated locally.

Here's the back, an adorable bird and flower print, with lots of pink!  (Debbie, does this look familiar?)  I was lucky enough to have this yardage in my stash, because my friend and I went to a sale last Saturday.

The sale was at the Textile Arts Center in Madison.  All sorts of sewing/knitting/crafting items donated to the center were sold for great prices.  Above is the major "loot" I got.  I always think of myself like a pirate at these sales, scooping up treasure.  Arr!  All told I bagged over 40 yards of pre-owned fabric.

That doesn't even count the scraps!  I made a scrap rainbow out of them when I got home.  Lots of them came from a UFO someone had started.  I'm looking forward to cutting them up.

Fabric shopping is fun of course, but the best part of the day was spending time with my friend.  We went out to lunch and spent time catching up, and Debbie gave me these fat quarters and thread as a birthday present.  She knows just what I like!  And the pink one in front is a cat print!  Thanks, Debbie, for a great day.

I'm still making flannel quilts for the annual Community Baby Shower, and I finished this one this week.  I'm having a terrible time getting the color right in the photos.  The background is actually a soft yellow.

The giraffes and happy monkeys were fun to work with. They also came from a sale a couple of years ago. 

Here's the back, a star print from another sale.  I probably have enough left to back two more small quilts.  The simple quilting is easy to do with the poly batting, and makes the quilt soft and cozy.

Snicky the cat thinks so!  I had to make him get off the quilt so I could bind it.  It now comes with cat cuddles.  Don't worry, it will be thoroughly washed before it goes to a baby.

This is a great time of year at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  It's so much fun deciding which quilt blocks to make all year in all the colors.  I chose the Bright Hopes block to use up my 2.5 in. squares and 2.5 in. x 4.5 in. rectangles.

It's fun finding cute prints for these blocks.

The one with the unicorn center is my favorite!

Hubby and I are very excited this morning.  We're going to pick up our new kitten!  She's a lovely little rescue that our oldest daughter has been looking after for us.  I hope Snicky will be a good big brother to her.

Have a lovely week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these wonderful ladies:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Pink Flannel, Rainbows, Hearts, and Bonus Blocks

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Can you tell it's pink month?

Yes, it is definitely pink month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for January.  I apologize for the indoor-only photos, but it was snowing here today.  So I hung this pink flannel scrap quilt on the closet door in the guest room where it's warm and dry to snap a few pictures.

This is one of the kits I cut last year when I was straightening up my flannel stash.  It's a 4 patch, as you can see. The alternate unpieced block is a rainbow print.  

I quilted a 3 in. grid in the main section.  It was easy to do that with the 4 patches by following the center seams, but I had to sew right down the middle of the 6 in. alternate blocks in both directions.  I've marked this before with a quilting marker, but I wanted to try something else.

This is a Hera marker.  The name is kind of misleading, because it doesn't really make any "marks".  You use the curved end to crease the fabric, and quilt it while you can still see the crease.  The big advantage is not having any marks on the quilt to wash out or erase.

I've had a Hera marker for a long time but never really used it.  This little flannel quilt seemed like a good place to try it out.  I used it with a ruler as a straight-edge, and it worked great.  The creases  showed up well on the soft flannel.  I'm really happy with it.

Here's the back, diaper pin print flannel!  Does anybody remember diaper pins?  I used cloth diapers with my babies in the late 1970s-early 1980s and pinned them on with this kind of big pin.  (There's a trick to it to keep from sticking the baby.)  Once disposable diapers became readily available, cloth diapers and diaper pins were used less and less.  I wonder if young moms today even know what they are!

Trying to decide which blocks to make all year for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is hard:  there are so many great blocks!  I have 8 in. Bowties already, and now I'm adding 6 in. Hearts.  They're fun and easy to make, plus they mix well with other blocks.

This heart is made of a heart print!  With a side of rainbows.

I'm making the blocks like this, with "flippy corners".  

When these big pieces are cut off, I sew them into HSTs, and trim them to 2.5 in. square.

For every heart block, I also get 2 bonus HSTs.

I'm adding two squares from the 2.5 in. square drawer to the 2 triangle squares to make these little blocks.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet.

I might put 4 of them together and make star blocks.

Or maybe something completely different!

Our youngest grandsons were back in school this week, but last week they spent some time with us.  One day we went to an indoor playground, and they absolutely loved it.

This giant slide was one of their favorite things.  I never could get a good picture.  They were going so fast they were just blurs.

The weeks seem to fly by like that too.  Just an exciting, happy blur.

I hope we all can enjoy the good times while they're whirling by.

Have a lovely week, everyone.

Cheers for reading this,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at SoScrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

Rainbow Dugout Quilt, Pink Bowties, and Happy 2025

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

I made a LOT of quilt blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in 2024.  It might take me all this year to finish them up!  Technically I finished this quilt last weekend, before the New Year.

I was calling these "Stretched Stars" blocks, but it turns out my measurements were off slightly and they didn't really line up to make stars.  (Click HERE for that post.)  They work fine set like this, though.

I got the idea for this arrangement from these books by the late great Mary Ellen Hopkins, quilting pioneer and rotary cutting genius.  The amazing It's Okay If You Sit On My Quilt Book was a groundbreaker in 1982 when it was first published.  The quilting world was changed forever by the invention of the rotary cutter, and Mary Ellen showed us so many ways to use what she called a "whizzywhacker".

If you've never seen these books before, I recommend looking for them in your library or used book store.  There are so many ideas in here.  Mary Ellen's mind must have been going 80 mph all the time.

And those blocks I made last year?  She called them Dugout blocks, because they could be used to make a block called Kansas Dugout.  The books will be inspirational as I finish up the rest of the blocks.

My blocks finish at 4.5 in., and there are 56 of them in the quilt.  I added a striped border and some simple quilting.

The back is this fun dotted print, and I bound with purple.  The quilt will be donated locally.

It's a new Rainbow Scrap Challenge year.  Have you started yet?  January's color of the month is pink.  This year I'm starting my blocks with these bundles of small remnants I'm calling Big Scraps.  The goal is to make some room in the overflowing bushel basket while making this year's blocks.

 

First up:  8 in. finished Bowties.

Check out the dinosaur fabric!  A friend gave it to me.  Do you see the date?  1993!  It's 100% cotton  decent quality fabric, and still useful even after all these years.

January is also Community Baby Shower month here in the Milwaukee area.  I like making flannel quilts for babies, especially when it's so cold outside.  This stack of squares will be a pink and white Trip Around the World.  I've got a few others in the mix as well.

My young grandsons were here all day most of last week while school is out for Christmas break.  We went to the library on Monday, and found this cool igloo, made of old milk jugs.  

They also had fun with the puppet theater before finding fun books to take home.  Germantown Community Library is awesome!

The start of a new year is a great time to reevaluate all sorts of things, including our hobbies.  But I'm not going to make any hard and fast New Year's Resolutions.  I just want to make scraps into quilts for people who need them.  That's the plan!

Have a lovely week, and thanks for reading!

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

I love reading quilt blogs!  Check out these friendly creative bloggers at the following link parties:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge