I Spy A Little Quilt, and Going Bananas

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

 I spy a little I Spy quilt hanging on the clothesline!  

It's made of 5 in. (cut) squares.  I was inspired by this quilt top (below) that I finished for the quilt guild a few weeks ago:

The top was donated by a very generous quilter, who made a nice big stack of tops during the pandemic lockdown.  For this one she used novelty prints (my favorite!), alternating between light and dark.  People, I tried to do the same for my quilt, but the randomness of it drove me nuts.  I loved the look of the original quilt, but I just cannot do random! So I picked an alternate fabric from the stash and calmed it down a little.

Do you make kits for yourself?  I often do, especially when I'm cutting up scraps.  I can get excited about an idea for a quilt, get it ready, and then work on it when other projects are done.  That's what I did with this little one.  

As I was putting it together, I started noticing that most of the prints featured animals:  dinosaurs, cows, bugs, birds, plus fictional animals like Scooby-Doo and Daniel Tiger, and even a tiny bit of Bucky Badger.  Then I remembered that I did this on purpose when I made the kit!  (This is why I'm writing this stuff down now!)

Before I remembered my plan, I replaced one of the animal squares with this banana one.  Oops!  So it's all animals, plus one banana square.  Even the border is a grasshopper print.

The backing is butterflies on white.  The new poly batting is working out great, and will make the quilt warm and snuggly for the recipient.  (Thanks again, Joey!)

I had bananas on my mind last night when I was choosing a border for another Bricks quilt, so this happened.  I bought this bananas-on-denim print at a flea market, and now I'm down to only a yard left.  I'll show the whole quilt when it's done.

Update on the GSAFE auction:  The original goal was to raise $30,000.  The actual total was $37,337!  My three quilts brought in over $600.  I am over the moon!  I was just hoping they would get even one bid.  The money will be used to help LGBTQ kids in schools.   (Click HERE for their web site.)

We're getting our Christmas decorations out a little at a time.  Buddy and Little Guy helped put tiny ornaments on this tree and regular ornaments on the big tree.  They are handy to have around.

Who says kids need expensive toys?  Little Guy's favorites this week are actual rocks!  We gathered these at the lake several months ago.  They're great for loading into train cars or dump trucks.  I wonder if he'll have as much fun with his Christmas presents?

I hope you're having a wonderful week.  Happy Hanukah to all who celebrate!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these wonderful quilters:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Hands 2 Help Check In: Two More and One on the Way

Welcome to Treadlestitches! 

 Two more quilts are ready for donation for the Hands 2 Help annual drive.

Here's an I Spy baby/child quilt made from 5 in. squares.

Novelty prints, plus bananas in the border.
 

Next, Hourglass four patch in bright colors.

Mostly NOT novelty prints, except for these cats in the border.

Those are done, and will be going to Project Linus next week.

Next, this one is the one on the way.  I'm layering it up today, and might even get some of the quilting done.

It's a little farm quilt, with lots of cows and chickens and a few sheep.  Oh, and John Deere tractors.

Right now I've got an old Loretta Lynn song going through my head, called One's On the Way. When looking it up this morning, I learned it was written by Shel Silverstein of Where the Sidewalk Ends fame.  Who knew?

I love seeing what everyone is making to help others.

Happy quilting!

Linking up to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

 

I Spy Purple Blocks

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It's purple month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I'm loving it!  Lots of my purple scraps are finding homes in blocks that will become donation quilts around the end of the year.  Above are 4 of my 16 patch blocks, each with 8 different lights and 8 different purples.

Next are my Uneven Nine Patch blocks.  Half of them have dark centers and half have light centers.  Some of the purples are more reddish and some tend toward blue.  I'm making them from 5 in. squares (click HERE for directions).

So far, this monster is my all time favorite purple novelty print.  The word it's saying is Rawrr!  Of course I had to put some of it in each set of RSC blocks.  I only had a fat quarter, so sadly it is almost used up.

I was planning on showing these happy blocks when I was interrupted by a happy cat who wanted some cuddles.  Snicklefritz is only seven months old, and still seems like a baby kitten even though he looks like a big cat.

He's gone to chase a sunbeam, so now you can see the blocks.  There's that monster, up in the top left.

This print, with science words, is fun, too.  My husband is a retired chemist, so I made sure to have the word chemistry visible.

That's all my RSC blocks done for April.  I'm only managing to be ahead of schedule this month because I chose easy blocks, but it feels good to get them done anyway.

This I Spy top got quilted and bound last weekend, and is ready for donation.

In my head I'm calling this one Fifty Novelty Prints.  

 

There are 48 squares, all different, plus the banana print border, and...

Scottie dogs on the back!  The fabric for both the back and the binding came from the Winter Quilt Show back in February.

I got all of the fabric in this photo in an unusual way.  The vendors had pieces of fabric of varying sizes laid out on tables.  If you wanted any of it, you bought a plastic zip lock bag from them, and stuffed it full of whatever you chose.  There were two sizes of bags (one gallon and two gallon, I think).  I got all the fabric above into a gallon bag, which cost $10.  What a deal, right?  

It's about time for me to get off the computer and get some rest.  My two youngest grandsons are staying with us this weekend while their parents are out of town, and I'm already wiped out.

For our after school snack today we made "dirt cups", with chocolate pudding, crushed oreos, and gummy worms.  Yummy!

Our first grade Buddy lost his first tooth Thursday, and asked me to take his picture with his new smile.

I hope you have something great to smile about this week.  Happy Quilting!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap  

 

 

 

Two Little Tops

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

 

It's been a busy week here at Treadlestitches.  It's spring break for the grand kids I babysit, so we had lots of fun but the quilting just didn't get done.  I did find time to piece two little tops for Hands2Help, and they'll be quilted soon.  I hope.  The first one is the I Spy quilt above.

I'm trying to use more of my 5 in. strips and squares this year.  Many of them are novelty prints (which I love!) and I Spy is perfect for them.  I chose 48 squares, 6 each of 8 colors, and set them with a colorful dot fabric left over from another quilt.  It was tough finding even six novelty fabrics in orange (do I need to go shopping?) so it was on my mind when I chose the orange solid cornerstones.

The border is this banana print, from 1992!  I found it at a flea market last summer.

My little guys let me interrupt their playing for a photo.

I hope this will be a fun quilt for a child.  It was a blast to make!

So was this one, that I'm calling Hourglass Four Patch.  I tried something new with it.  The hourglass units are made from charm squares.  I wrote up a tutorial for it, click HERE to see it.

For this quilt, I chose mostly saturated colors and just a few novelty prints. 
 

The border is this fabric that I call "Big Kitties".  I was so happy I had enough left of it, after using it in other quilts.  How can you go wrong with purple, orange, red, and green cats?

The grand kids posed with this one, too, but they were getting tired of being models and ready to go back to playing.

I'm so lucky to have such good helpers.  I did get my Buddy to pose one more time.  The thing he's hugging is a giant roll of poly batting.  Wonder how long it will take me to use this up?  Especially since it's one of TWO giant rolls!

I'm experimenting with different ways to use the batting for charity quilts.  It's lightweight, soft, and warm.  

Sorry about all the dark photos, it's been raining here lately and today we've got a little snow, which must be annoying for all the robins that are back.

Have a great week and thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy   The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for April is purple!!!  Hurray!!!

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

This is IT! I Spy Pink

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Did you ever see a quilt someplace, in a book or a quilt store or on the internet, and realize this pattern was exactly what you didn't even know you were looking for?  I saw a puss in the corner quilt on the Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilting blog, and it made me gasp and then say, "This is IT!  This is what I want to do with my pink scraps!" 

I've made quilts in this pattern before, but hadn't thought about alternating the colors.  Block A has a dark center and dark corners, and Block B has a light center and light corners.  Suddenly I had a use for both light and dark (pink) novelty squares.  (Thanks, Cathy at Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilting!)

It just so happens that several of my pink fabrics have bunnies on them, and this is Easter weekend.  I'm not exactly sure why or when we started linking bunnies with the holiday, but I like bunnies all the time anyway.  The little flannel ones were made by someone in my quilt group, and the grandkids love them.

More Easter decorations, and another bunny print.  I've had the duck for a while, and got the bunny recently at an antique mall.  The ceramic eggs were painted by my youngest daughter (the one the duckie is holding) and her then-six year old son (the one with the bunny).  I don't have a lot of Easter decorations, but I like these little things.

I've had the Nice Buns fabric for a long time.  I hope it's not inappropriate for a kid's quilt.  Those do look like nice bunnies, with such sweet smiles.  You can see the wild print border in this photo.

The backing is this adorable older Hoffman print.  There were several yards of it in the basket my generous quilt group friends gave me several weeks ago (Click HERE  Scroll down) and it just seemed perfect for this quilt.  As you can tell, I used the serpentine stitch on my Pfaff to quilt a 2 in. grid.  I really do use it a lot, and maybe I should try other ways to quilt, but hey, it works!

Like the quilt that inspired it, this one will be donated.  It will go to the Little Lambs Foundation, as part of this years Hands 2 Help drive.  Every center square is different, and there are lots of fun prints, so I hope it will keep a youngster entertained.  Some details:  the blocks are 8 in. square, there are 25 of them set 5 x 5, with a 2 in. finished border, which brings the quilt up to 44 in. square.

Speaking of I Spy, my kindergarten buddy has been very excited about these I Spy books lately.  We had the Spooky Night book here already, and I got the first I Spy book at the library.  He has really sharp eyes, but there are some things we still haven't found.

This morning the boys had another book, the kind that plays music when you push the buttons.  As the songs played, they ran around the living room laughing.  I tried to take pictures, but they're all just blurs.

Happy Easter to all who celebrate, and a very happy weekend to everyone.

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Treasures

This might look like a small suitcase.  Or a vintage overnight bag.  

But when you look inside, you can see it's a treasure chest.  The treasures here are 5 in. squares of bright fabrics, mostly novelty prints.  (I love this stuff!)

That's where most of this quilt top came from.  It's the I Spy quilt top I finished two months ago.

With a little help from Little Buddy's nap times and his parents picking him up early a couple days, I finally got it quilted.

It's been cold and rainy this week, so outdoor photos have not been ideal.  Here's the little quilt laid out on my kitchen table.
In my never-ending quest for better ways to mark a quilt for quilting, I returned to Golden Threads paper this week to quilt the wide white border.  (By the way, I have no affiliation with the company that makes this product.)

The first time I used Golden Threads paper, I made a big mistake.  Everything was going fine, I cut a strip of paper the size of the border I was quilting, and then traced a stencil onto the paper.  BUT, at that time I used a pencil.  (Cue ominous music.)  I happily machine quilted that border, and ripped off the paper, only to discover that THE PENCIL MARKS HAD TRANSFERRED TO THE QUILT!!!

 Boy, was I mad.  The next time I saw a vendor demonstrating Golden Threads paper, I talked to them about it (I had cooled off by then and was unhappy but polite).  They knew about the problem, and told me to only use permanent pens to mark on the paper.

This made me nervous.  If pencil marks transfer to a quilt, I can get a fabric eraser and work on them.  What if permanent ink transferred to the quilt?  (I have not gotten to this ripe old age without a healthy skepticism for what salespeople tell me.)  But I had a huge roll of this stuff and lots of quilts to mark, so I tried it on a quilt that really didn't matter that much (badly pieced, etc.)
It actually worked!

Here's how to use it.
1.  Trace your design (stencil, quilting diagram from a book or magazine, etc.) with a permanent pen onto the paper.  See photo above.  This works well for borders, alternate blocks, sashings, and so on, but I don't think I would use it for an overall design.
2.  Pin the paper in place, as in this blurry photo below.  Try to have the points of the pins facing away from you as you sew.  (Ask me how I know that!)

3.  Quilt through the paper.  (Note to self:  try to quilt on the lines.)

4.  Once the quilting is done, you have to pull the paper off.  It's basically tissue paper, so tears easily, but watch out for little pieces that get stuck in the stitches.  Here's the pile I had after quilting one of the borders.

And that's it.  The permanent ink lines DON'T transfer, and there are no marks to wash out or erase.

I may use this more often, especially on borders.

The rest of the quilting was very simple, just lines a presser foot away from the seams.

Here's the backing, a cute alphabet print with hearts.  The border is another novelty print, a light red with white anchors.


I'm not sure what's going to happen to this little quilt.  I think my Little Buddy will enjoy playing with it, and finding the matches.  Each novelty square in the center has a matching square in the border, and some of the squares are his favorite things, like cats and dinosaurs and Thomas the tank engine.  I may keep it here for him.  If he's not interested, I'll donate it.

What's going on in your world this week?
I'm wishing you lots of time with whatever you treasure.
Cheers for reading,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up today with:
Angela at soscrappy
Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict (Can I Get A Whoop Whoop)
Myra at Busy Hands Quilts
Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Can't wait to see what everybody else is up to!