Thrifty Top and Orange Whirly-gigs

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge is the gift that keeps on giving, isn't it?  This quilt top is made from blocks I made last year as part of the RSC.  The block pattern is called Thrifty, and is #1602 in Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.

It's kind of a long quilt (especially for me!), so I had to fold it over for the clothesline photo.  Here on the floor you can see all 20 blocks.

I tried something new with the sashing.  The blocks are 9 in. finished, and each division in the block is 3 in.  For the sashing, I used 3 in. finished squares in bright colors.  I chose squares that were more monotone in color than my usual novelty prints.  There's no rhyme or reason to the color placement of the sashing strips.  I just put them where I thought they looked good.

The border is this blue printed plaid.  I've been steering away from plaids as borders, thinking I would have to match the plaid if piecing the border strips.  That can be hard to do with a printed plaid.  Then I noticed commercial items like shirts etc. don't always match the plaids, and I gave myself permission to relax about it.

It was fun revisiting these blocks when putting the top together.  It will go to the Children's Advocacy Center in Milwaukee after being quilted by a volunteer.

Speaking of the CAC, all these quilts and tops got dropped off this week.  The drop off point is about 30 minutes from my house (more like 45 min. now due to construction) so I only go about every other month.  These quilts and tops are the ones that have been shown on the blog since the last drop off in February.  

This load was 8 small quilts, 1 twin-sized quilt (the princess one), 5 lap/twin tops, and two small flannel quilts. The flannel quilts were made by Terrific Tammy and Awesome Joy from my wonderful quilt guild.

It's orange month at the RSC, hurray!  I love patterns like this that seem like magic.  The block starts with 2 sets of 2 matching charm squares, and ends up like this.  (Click HERE for the tutorial from Sew Preeti.)  

When I decided what to make for my RSC blocks this year, I went through my orphan blocks and found some whirly-gig blocks I had made to test the pattern.  They needed to be made into a quilt.  Four of these orange ones were in the bag, so I only had to add 2 more.

These are the two new ones.  Check out that Star Wars fabric!

Trees are bursting into blossom now, like this little apple tree in the park.  My walks are much more colorful.

It's been rainy the last few days, so we've been doing inside things like puzzles and games and reading.  My youngest daughter and her son Little Guy were curled up on the couch reading his favorite Pokemon book.

I'm in a rush today, I'm going to a meeting of the Wisconsin Quilt Study Group about 2 hours away.  Should be lots of fun and lots of wonderful quilts antique quilts to see.

Have a good week, everyone!  And thanks for reading this.

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these great linky party hostesses:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy