Amanda Gone Wild

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

 It's full-on summer here in Wisconsin, and we are loving it.  School is out for the kids, the gardens are growing, and we spend lots of time outside.

In the evening when the kids have gone home, you'll find me up in the sewing room with the windows open.  Yesterday I finished a little quilt.  The pattern is from Me and My Sister designs, and is named Amanda.  The Amanda in the pattern looks like this:

It's neat, colorful and attractive.

Here's my version.  I'm afraid mine looks like an explosion in a confetti factory.

I didn't use any light fabrics.  My only rule was "no two pieces of the exact same print in a block".  The centers are all different, mostly novelty fabrics. All of the rectangles came from the 1.5 in. scraps.

The back doesn't do anything to calm it down.
 

The quilting is just a simple 2.5 in. grid over the blocks, plus two lines in the borders.

The border fabric is a little calmer, just little animals and balloons on a light blue.

Looking at it now, I'm rethinking some of my color choices.  Amanda has kind of gone wild!  Then I remembered why I started making bright quilts.  It was all because of kids in need and a program called Quilts for Kids. 

Just about every quilter knows about Quilts for Kids.  This organization fueled by volunteers delivers donated quilts to kids in hospitals.  Anyone who has ever been to a hospital knows how cold and colorless they can be.  I've been donating quilts to Quilts for Kids for more than 10 years.  I might have gone overboard on Amanda, but I'm sure she'll find a loving home. 

Light blue scraps are coming together into these big bricks blocks, one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects.

Fun in the sun, and Thomas the Tank Engine's friends.

Blimey!  Here there be pirate fabric!
 

I felt like a pirate yesterday, when I brought home this loot from a garage sale!  Yards and yards of bright fabric, plus fabric markers and dish cloth yarn.  Arr!

I'm not much for flower gardening, but these roses just keep going no matter how I goof up!

Have a lovely week!  I hope you have time for the things you love to do!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Angela at So Scrappy, home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge
 

Orange Houses and Leftovers

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It's the last Saturday in May, and that means it's the last week of orange month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  Sewing up the orange scraps has been so much fun.  These little houses are my last RSC project.

My very favorite one is this print of Horton the elephant from the Dr. Seuss stories.  Isn't it amazing how many different shades there are of any given color?

Now for the leftovers.  I have to admit, I love leftovers when it comes to food.  My favorite lunch is supper left over from the night before.  I keep a close eye on the leftovers in the refrigerator and try to use them up quickly, but I tend to forget about the quilting leftovers.  They are mostly shoved into a drawer.

This week I opened the drawer.

Right away I found a bag of tumblers left over from several quilts I made years ago.  There were enough lights and darks to make a small quilt top.

I admit, I am not totally thrilled with the color placement, etc.  Maybe I should have mixed things up a bit more.  And if I was making it from scratch, I would have chosen different fabrics.  But the object of this exercise was to use up the leftovers and make a quilt for a child who needs one, so I'm telling my inner critic to chill out.

Snicklefritz has taken on the job of quilt model, so I guess I should give him a raise.  He's showing off the kid friendly prints:  numbers, Clifford, D.W. from Arthur, Curious George's animal friends, dinosaurs, ABCs, and Peter Rabbit.

There were a few tumblers that were still left behind.  I cut them up into useful pieces:  a 2.5 in. square, a 2.5 x 3.5 in. rectangle, and a larger scrap for crumb blocks.  The rest was too small to use, and was tossed.  No guilt!
 

Also in the drawer were some red and white cut pieces given to me by a friend.  They measured 3 in. square, which is not a size I normally use.  (The math is easier if the squares finish at a whole number.  I really need the math to be easy!)  Some were already sewn into sets of two.

I made the squares into four patches, which finished at 5 in.  I had to add in a few of my own reds and whites, and of course the alternate squares and borders.

The blue M&Ms fabric came from a thrift store.  It was a strip about 15 in. wide and 3 yards long, so it must have also been somebody's leftover.  From the campaign hats and only having red and blue M&Ms, I think it's meant to be political, and represents both of our political parties.

This is all I had left!  I cut all the squares on the right to 2.5 in. (like the one on the left) and added them to the rest of the 2.5 in. squares.  These will be put into blocks, for the RSC or other projects.

I'm almost as happy as the little orange frog jumping for joy in this square. While I was working on leftovers I finished my Amanda blocks!

This pattern was just what I like--easy and fun to sew, and uses up scraps.

But now I have a problem.  I tend to cut too many pieces so I can be flexible about colors.  What do I do with these leftover strips?  

It really never ends, does it?  And I guess I'm okay with that.

The Sandhill cranes are back!  I love watching them in the park behind our house.  They are such beautiful, graceful birds.  The weather here has been lovely, a nice beginning to summer.

I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, whatever the weather is like where you live.  Happy Memorial Day weekend to all in the U.S.!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at Super Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap