UFO sightings

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for visiting!

As I write this, it's a cold rainy morning outside, but nice and cozy inside.  I'm doing a little happy dance, because this UFO is finally a finished quilt.

Here's the block.  Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns lists it as #2165, The Twinkling Star, first published in Capper's Weekly, in a Nancy Cabot column.

As you can tell, the blocks are enormous!  They are 24 in. square, and there are only 6 of them in this twin sized quilt.

More than 30 years ago, I saw an antique quilt in this pattern in a friend's house.  When I asked her about it, she said it came from her husband's family and was made by someone she only knew as Mrs. Boyd.  Because I didn't yet know the name of the pattern, I've always called it "Mrs. Boyd's quilt". 

For years I wanted to make a quilt like it.  In 2009 I finally started work on it.  Yep, 15 years ago. My friend Debbie C. and I decided to each make one, but with larger pieces than the original.  I got the blocks done, but they languished awhile.  I could hardly believe how much fabric these giant blocks used!  Anyway, I finished the top, and hit the old "how do I quilt it" road block.  More languishing, sigh.

Fast forward to now.  I have been trying to straighten up my quilting stuff in the basement, even before we had a new furnace put in and everything got discombobulated.  Many of my older quilt tops are being donated for charity, but I have a special love for Mrs. Boyd and knew I'd never quilt her myself.  I asked my friend Joey to quilt her for me, and she did a beautiful job with her freehand Baptist Fan design.
 

Two weeks ago I got the finished quilt back from Joey, and I was over the moon about it.  In between family stuff and other obligations, I got the binding on this week.  I chose red, to set off the edge of the quilt, and because Debbie's version has lots of gorgeous red in it (and I'm jealous of how pretty it is!).

Finishing a quilt always gives me energy to tackle another one!  Good thing, too, because this happened at this month's quilt meeting.

Our quilt guild meets in a church.  Some of the church ladies asked us to finish some of their UFOs into quilts for charity.  I chose this one, a butterfly quilt.

These butterflies were huge, nearly 10 inches across.  They were probably cut in the late 1960s, early 1970s.  And they were poly cotton.  (As a self professed cotton snob, this was a bit off-putting.)  Also in the bag was about 3 yards of muslin (that was thankfully 100% cotton), and a handwritten design for a large quilt with alternate plain muslin blocks and a muslin ruffle.

I really like taking someone else's UFO and reworking it into a quilt.  It's a fun challenge.  First, I knew I would not be appliqueing these blocks.  Poly cotton is tough to applique, since it resists taking a crease, and it's not my favorite technique.  But I did want to honor the original quilter's intention.  

I'm going with pieced butterflies.  I did the purple ones first, for purple month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I'm cutting the large wings from the original butterflies, the background from the muslin, the black bodies from vintage scraps, and the rest from coordinating solids.

This pattern was a free one, which I call The Captain's Butterfly.  It was designed by "Captain" Richard Wightman of Treadleon.net, a website for people powered sewing machine users. I wrote about it in 2015, complete with a tutorial. (Click HERE).  It's an 8 in. finished block.  It does not seem to be on Treadleon any more.

The top two butterflies are made from the pieces in the bag.  The bottom one is made from vintage fabrics from my stash.  My plan is to use mostly the original pieces, and add in a few to make enough for a small/medium sized quilt.

 On to the projects that will hopefully NOT end up as UFOs, this year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.

A week's worth of grocery receipts plus bits and pieces of purple makes these strips.   I've got an idea of what I might do with them, but we'll see.  They are fun to make.

New project!  These are fun to make, too.  I'm cutting hexagons and triangles from my reproduction scraps using the Accuquilt cutter.  Can you see the white star in the center?  When they go together in the quilt there will be lots of other colors, of course, and scrappy light "stars".

No set in seams makes these "blocks" easy and fun.  Now I have to go back and do green and red to catch up.

Speaking of fun, it was Spring Break this week for our little boys, so we took them to the Betty Brinn Children's Museum in Milwaukee.  The place was packed, but it was still a great day.  In the photo above they are driving a pretend truck.

I hope you are having a good week, whether working on old projects or new.  Happy Easter to all who celebrate!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Treadle On Block Exchange Finish

Hurray!  I finished a UFO!  This one has been waiting for TEN YEARS.

The blocks for this one were three dimensional bow ties that finish at 8 in. square.  (Here's a link to a tutorial for making all sizes:  3D Bowties)

This project started from a block exchange on the Treadle On internet group in 2006.  All participants made their blocks on people-powered machines (treadles and hand cranks).   We signed our names on the blocks, and also included the kind of sewing machine used, with the approximate date the machine was made.  This exchange was also called the Pre-1900 block exchange, because we all used machines that dated to before 1900.  To make it even more pre-1900, the directions asked us all to use reproduction fabrics.  (Not everybody did, but whatever.)

Each set had 36 blocks in it.  I had 33 blocks from other Treadleonions (that's what we call ourselves) and 3 that I had made.  One of the blocks was too small, so I made a new block to replace it, and then made 6 more to bring the total up to 42.

I added a bricks border, made from 2.5 x 4.5 in. rectangles I've had in my scraps for a while.  Most of these were reproduction fabrics, but I wasn't too strict about it.  The outer border is a warm brown print I bought on sale at J. J. Stitches in Sun Prairie.

This was another quilt as you go project.  When the quilt is set block to block, I usually quilt in sections rather than by the block.  This quilt was small enough to quilt in two sections, leaving me with only one seam to do by hand on the back.  I did ditch quilting around each block, and outline quilting around the seams.  It was important to quilt down the 3D centers, so they wouldn't catch on things.
In order to have enough slack (technical term) to stitch the sections together, you can't quilt right up to the joining edges of the sections.  I leave at least an inch unquilted.

Here's how I join the sections.  I pull the backing and batting away from the seam, and pin it.  Then I pin the seam, and stitch it on the machine.

Here's what it looks like on the front after I seamed the two sections together.

Here's the back, pinned for hand stitching.  I used a plain unbleached muslin for the back this time, since I already had it and it was the right size.
Next I quilted the area near the joining seam that hadn't yet been quilted.
Lastly, I quilted the borders, and bound with a warm orange plaid.

Woo hoo!  Now it's washed and drying on the clothesline on this beautiful day.

We're heading into a special holiday weekend, with Independence Day on Monday.  I was inspired by Colleen of Piecemaker Quilts to make this little top:

Here's the link to her much better quilt:  Let's Pretend

As you can see, the main part of this quilt is a panel of Patriotic Teddy Bears.  I got this at the sale at the museum, sort of as a bonus.  It was in a bundle of other fabrics.

The USA panel at the top has been in my basement box of wonders for a long time.
I might quilt this myself, or hand it off to the long armers at the guild.  It will go to a child when it's finished.
To all American quilters, Happy Fourth of July!  To all quilters everywhere, happy quilting!

I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts this week.