Dear Diary

Welcome to Treadlestitches, and to a new month!  I can't believe January is already over.

I stopped keeping a diary in junior high because it was the surest way to be ridiculed endlessly by my brothers and sisters, who always managed to find it and read it out loud. (AAK!)  Now, I really have no embarrassing secrets, and my only crush is my Dear Hubby, so diaries are okay again.  I'm making this one out of fabric.

Above are my diary quilt blocks for January.  Each separate block represents a week (mostly), and each strip is a day.  For each day, I choose something to represent that day.

I won't bore you with everything that happened all month long.  I will say that most Sundays are yellow, partly because it's sun-day (Dad joke), and partly because that's the day I talk to my mom on the phone for at least an hour, which is a bright spot in the week.  If I finish a quilt, I include a piece of it for that day (like the dark blue in the center of the block above).  I'm also using lots of my books/library fabrics for Tuesdays, when my Little Buddy and I go to the library.

As I say, each small block is meant to represent a week, with 7 strips, one for each day.  I intended 4 small blocks for each month. The biggest question about this was what to do when the month has more than 28 days.  In that case, I split the last strips into two days each.  Above, the last 3 strips are made up of 2 rectangles, for Sunday/Monday, Tuesday/Wednesday, and Thursday/Friday.

I still have no idea how I'm going to set the blocks.

You might have noticed all the children's prints and novelty fabrics in my diary quilt.  That's because I get to spend my days with this guy, my Little Buddy, seen here helping make his favorite blueberry pancakes.

We make snowman faces in them sometimes.

He also "helped" me pack up some quilts our local group is donating to Jack's Basket.  Here he is pointing out polar bears in the print on this cute quilt.  Bella the dog is nearby, in case we need to have our faces licked.  (Yuck!)  Thank goodness they're going to wash the quilts before sending them out to the babies.

These are the quilts I was packing up.  Aren't they amazing?  There are 12 of them in this batch.  That brings us up to a grand total of 34 quilts sent to Jack's Basket since last summer from our small group of around 50 active members.  I go into more detail on our group's blog, if you're interested click HERE.

Quilting is happening!  Zigzag #1 is about half done.  Mrs. Pfaff will be whirring away later today.

Orange is the new color for February for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I couldn't be happier.  The pile of 1930s repros and vintage prints above will eventually be house blocks.

For some reason, I've been in the mood to cut scraps this week.

This little stack (really orange, not yellow, bad lighting) is six blocks worth of Text Me A Quilt.

The shoofly blocks are cut too, ready to sew.

And I finally decided on a layout for the Roscoe Star blocks, so the last blocks are cut to sew as leaders and enders.
You could say I've got my work cut out for me.
(I can just about hear my Dad saying that.  Gotta love Dad jokes.)
Have a wonderful week, and a great start to February.  If it includes sewing, so much the better!
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:
Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop
Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday
Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Scraps of Cadet Blue

Does this look tempting to you?  It did to me!  This is the contents of a scrap bag I bought at Ye Olde Schoolhouse quilt shop in Cedarburg, WI, a couple of weeks ago.  Believe it or not, all this reproduction fabric was crammed into a gallon ziplock bag.

This is where I stashed the scraps when I got home--my scrap processing center aka bushel basket.

And here's what it looks like this morning on my sewing room floor.  I am combing through the mess, looking for reproduction cadet blue pieces.

If you love antique quilts and/or like making reproductions, you probably already know about this book, Clues in the Calico by Barbara Brackman.  She defines cadet blue as a lighter blue,  popular from around 1890 to 1925.  The reason we call it cadet blue is because that's how it was described in the Sears catalogs of that era.

The Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog was the Amazon.com of their day.  But can you imagine ordering items based on black and white drawings, like this one for fabric?

The text tells us the colors and the type of fabric (cotton, silk, flannel, etc.).

This add caught my eye when I bought this catalog several years ago.  It's for a Minnesota A sewing machine in a fancy cabinet.

And here's a very similar machine in my dining room.  Somebody, over a hundred years ago, ordered this machine from Sears, I'm sure.  It passed through several hands before a friend and I picked it up in northern Illinois.  By the way, it still works perfectly.

But I digress.  What was I going to do with the cadet blue scraps?

Roscoe stars!  (Click HERE for my first post on this project.)  I am reproducing a quilt I saw in an antique mall in Beloit.  Many of the blocks were made from dark indigo blue prints, but some of them were light blue.  I don't have enough of most cadet blues to make the whole star, but I like the scrappy look anyway.

So far, I have 3 of these light blue blocks done.
This is definitely the month to make these.  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for August is light or bright blue.
As long as I was sorting out these blues for the Roscoe stars, I got started on my spiky stars for the month.

Two out of three ain't bad, right?  (Hey, Meatloaf said so!)
Last Saturday at this time, I was flying over the Atlantic, heading back from Paris.  I promise, I will post about that soon.  But today, I'm just so happy to be home, digging through the scraps.

I'm wishing inspiration and relaxation for you all this week.
Cheers for reading this,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:
Angela at Soscrappy
Myra at Busy Hands Quilts
Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Mood Indigo

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It's a beautiful morning, and I'm thinking about one of my favorite colors, indigo blue.

One of the first things that drew me to quilting was my love of antique quilts, like the top above.  And of all the amazing colors in these old quilts, indigo blue was/is my favorite.

Just look at the way this unknown quilter used many different blue and white prints as setting squares for these scrap blocks.  She may have done that because she didn't have enough of any one print.  I'm glad she didn't--it gives us so much more to look at.

Dark blue is this month's color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so I've been pulling out my reproduction indigo scraps to make my spiky stars.

Here they are, ready to be quilted by the block.  I'm hoping to finish the spiky star quilt before the end of the year.

Having recently organized my "big scraps" (pieces ranging in size from a fat quarter to nearly a yard), I have a whole box of repro blues.  Hmm, wonder what I could do with these?  Isn't there a blue and white quilt in the back of my mind somewhere?

Oh, yes, this one.  I saw it hanging in the Roscoe Antique Mall in Beloit last December, and took this photo. 

Of course I had to make a test block. The pattern is a variation of Double T or Capital T (Brackman #1662b).  Because the corners are turned so the dark fabric is to the outside of the block, it doesn't look like a T at all.
So I'm calling it Roscoe Star.
And off we go, on another squirrel chase.
Just as soon as I get over this cold.

I'm wishing good health for you this week, and happy stitching.
Cheers for reading,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:
Angela at So scrappy
Myra at Busy Hands Quilts
Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Cynthia at Oh Scrap