Monsters, Potato Chips, and Rail Fence

 Welcome to Treadlestitches! 

Here's a happy silly little quilt made to be donated.  It's sewn from orphan blocks (the half square triangles and the two larger pieced blocks) and squares cut from a panel of encouraging monsters.

My wonderful quilt group had a challenge to use panels in a quilt.  (Thanks, Nancy Queen of Scraps!)  I found these guys in a box in the basement where they've languished for years, and put them to work.  This is my favorite one.  All kids should know they are loved.

It is definitely okay to be different!  Even if you have four arms and eyes on stalks!  These messages were meant for kids, but we grown ups need to know them too.  

I had a little trouble cutting these monsters out of their panel.  As usual, they were not printed perfectly straight (sigh).  To get the monster plus the saying I ended up with a sliver of color from the panel on a couple of these.  I'm trying not to worry about it.

Here's the back, a wild print I've used before, with a solid green binding.  The hsts are leftovers from a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project a couple of years ago.

Check out Eeyore in the border!  I added 2.5 in. (cut) scrappy squares for the outer border.  The batting is a frankenbatt from my 80/20 scraps.  I washed the quilt before donating, which is why it's kind of crinkly.

It's been fun working with yellow this month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  Are you participating? I always love seeing what other quilters are doing.  Here are this week's blocks.

My most "sensible" set of RSC blocks are these potato chips.  I only make 4 each month because I don't have very many pre-cut rectangles for each color, and each block takes 12 (plus 6 light ones).  I'm expecting to get two baby quilts from these at the end of the year.

This block has a monkey, a pink dog, honey bees, and a cat's face in the center.

I'm also making rail fence blocks.  I'm trying to shade them from light to dark.  Not always successfully, of course.  There aren't very many yellow scraps in my scrap baskets, so I'm repeating fabrics a lot, but it won't matter when the quilts are put together.

Speaking of rail fence, how about a new project?

I opened my new issue of American Patchwork & Quilting, and here it was!  It's called Rainbow Rails, and was designed by Laurie Matthews.  You can find it in issue #188, pages 33-39, on newsstands now through June 7.

This was exactly what I needed for my solid and light/low volume strips!  I practically ran upstairs to get started.

As usual, I modified the pattern to fit my strips.  Plus I cut rectangles rather than making strip sets, just because I'd rather work that way.  The pattern calls for 1.5 in. strips, which I changed to use my 2 in. strips to cut 2 in. x 5 in. rectangles.  My blocks will be 4.5 in. finished, and I'm making 90 of them.  In order to have a good variety of low volume pieces I limited each print to 10 rectangles or less.

Here's what I had left after cutting.  There is still a lot!  Maybe I need to make bigger quilts?

In other news, we're getting some good spring weather, and the tulips are blooming.

April showers are definitely a real thing here.  When we can't get outdoors we can color or draw.  Or quilt!

Have a wonderful week, whatever the weather brings.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

Red Red Binding

I've got a reggae song going through my head this week.  This could be why.

Red Red Binding!  I'm singing it to the tune of Red Red Wine by UB40.  Wonder how it happens that everything I'm working on lately has a red binding?
Since this is my first post in 3 weeks, I should have 3 finished quilts to show. Luckily, I do!

The first is my Ocean Waves quilt, which I am embarrassed to say I pieced way back in 2012.  Above is a photo of the top.

And here's the finish!  My friend Joey did the quilting, or it would probably still be in the closet.

Can you see the wonderful fan quilting she did on it?  Exactly right for this time period reproduction quilt.

Instead of a label, I just wrote directly on the back with a Pigma pen.
I am so amazing grateful for Joey's expertise.  God bless the longarm quilters!

When Joey was here recently for a weekend, I was working on this quilt for charity.  It's the latest from American Patchwork & Quilting magazine's Sew Giving column, and was designed by Jo Kramer and her daughter Kelli Hanken of Jo's Country Junction.  (Great daily blog, BTW.)  The name of this quilt is Make the Connection, and the pattern is in the August 2017 edition of the magazine.  I changed it a little, of course.  I just can't help it.

In the original, the design sort of steps down across the quilt.  I made mine step down to the center, and then back up again.  I also used light blue solid instead of dark blue.

It is so great to find batting, backing, and binding waiting in the stash.  And to use them up!

The last quilt with red binding is my Red Clover quilt.  I finished the top in June, and it's actually already quilted.  This must be a record for me, as I'm normally a prize procrastinator.

It helps that this was a small quilt, and I did really simple quilting on it.

Backing, batting, and binding were all in the stash.
Now I'd like to introduce you to my new sewing room helper.

Ta-da!  My new old iron.  Joey and I went to Goodwill when she was here, and I scored this old black beauty for $9.00.  There is a setting for permanent press, so you know it's been around a long time.

She's made in the USA (!) and honestly is the best iron I've had in 30 years.  My favorite feature?  NO AUTOMATIC SHUTOFF!!!  She also gets so hot I don't need steam.  And I can turn her off without unplugging her.  I only hope she lasts awhile.
Can you believe it's almost August?  Summer will soon be over!  Ackkk!  I still have a lot of summer
stuff I want to do!  So I'd better get after it.
Have a wonderful week!
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches
I'm linking up with Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts, and with Myra at Busy Hands Quilts.

Choose Happy

I'm taking today's title from words printed on fabric.  It's not even grammatically correct, as my English-major daughter would point out.  It should probably say, "Choose happiness", or Choose to be happy."  But the grammar doesn't really matter (don't tell my daughter I said that!).  It's the sentiment that counts.  I used the choose happy fabric as sashing in this quilt.

The pattern for the quilt came from this magazine, American Patchwork & Quilting, June 2017 issue.  I don't know if you've noticed, but they are including a quilt pattern specifically meant for charity/donation quilts in each issue so far this year. 

The column is called Sew Giving, and is hidden in the back of the magazine, after the stapled-in pattern sheets.  The pattern I used is called Positive Effect, and was designed by Amanda Niederhauser (jedicraftgirl.com).

Here's the original quilt from the article. 
As soon as I saw this pattern, I decided I had to make it.  (Does this ever happen to you?)  No matter what else I had going on in the sewing room, this was gonna get pieced.

I liked this quilt because:
1.  I could use 5 in. squares, which I had been cutting from some of my scraps, and 3.5 in strips, which seem to be multiplying in their shoebox.
2.  The blocks were big (12 in. finished), so I wouldn't need very many to make a good sized quilt.
3.  It was easy as pie.  Or actually easier.

Some of my favorite blocks are:

Cats!!!  Cat is my baby grandson's favorite word.  He says it all day long.  ALL DAY LONG.

My grandmother used to recite a poem about a purple cow.  This reminds me of that poem, even though the background of the center square, and not the cow, is purple.
"I've never seen a purple cow,
I never hope to see one.
But this I can say anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one."
I looked it up (thank you, Wikipedia!).  The author was Gelett Burgess, and it was published in 1895.  I changed it slightly to the version my Gran taught us.

Here's a glimpse of two blocks.  The one in the foreground is so insane I had to lie down after making it.

I sewed these blocks up during my grandson's naptimes, and it didn't take long to get 20 of them. 

The directions were good, and I liked the pattern, but I always have to change at least a few things.
Here's what I changed:
1.  I used bright colored prints and novelty fabrics to make the blocks.
2.  The original used the sashing fabric in the center of each block.  I used the centers to add another print.
3.  I added cornerstones in the sashing to give the top a punch of color.  Doing so used up some 2.5 in. squares from my "collection".  (Don't worry, I have LOTS more.)
4.  I added a 4 in. finished border on the outside.

I took this photo while auditioning border fabrics.  This wild Southwest fabric won!

So here's the top, all done and ready to go to our volunteer long-arm quilters.  With the added border, it measures roughly 66 in. x 80 in., and fits nicely on a twin bed.

So thanks to APQ for including patterns for those of us who sew for donation.  As far as I can tell from a short search of their web site (allpeoplequilt.com) these patterns are only available in the physical magazine.  If I'm wrong about that, let me know.

This week, I'm going to do all my usual things, like laundry and grocery shopping and babysitting and cleaning, and, of course, quilting.  And I'm going to choose happy in all the things I do.
I'm doing this because attitude really is everything, and being open to happiness really does encourage joy.  And not just because some fabric told me to.

I hope you can choose happy this week too.
Cheers,
Sylvia