Last Yellow Blocks, Museum Stuff, and the One Dollar Quilts

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

 The last Saturday of August is here already.  Summer fun has been taking up more of my time, but at least the yellow blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge are done.  Above are the 16 patch blocks.

This one is my favorite!  

I figured out why I started making 5 every month.  If I make 5 of 8 colors (leaving out pink, I made a whole baby quilt of the pink ones), I'll have 40 blocks at the end of the year.  That could make 2 baby quilts of 20 blocks each, or I could just make 2 more blocks and have 42 for a bigger quilt. 

I'm making 12 each of these Uneven Nine Patch/Puss in the Corner blocks each month.  I have absolutely no idea how many quilts or what size I'll be making.  Just winging it!

The big annual sale at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts was a great place to find cool scraps.  I got several small pieces of Dr. Seuss character prints.  I've always loved Dr. Seuss.  His wacky stories have delighted readers for generations.

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish!

This was the last week of summer vacation for our youngest grandkids.  Buddy earned a free Milwaukee Public Museum admission through the library's summer reading program, so we took both boys and went there on Wednesday.  They're posing here in front of a pretend street car.  We all had a great day.

My husband and I love going to museums, especially when on vacation in far away places.  While walking through the Pitt River Museum in Oxford, I spotted this bit of patchwork in one of the cases.  It's a pieced Parcheesi board, hand made from cotton fabric, that folds up for storage.  This museum does cases by theme, this one is games of the world.

I enjoy seeing and learning about all sorts of things in a museum, but "quilty" objects always catch my eye.  This is a female mummy in the Ashmolean Museum (also in Oxford) with traditional cloth wrappings that might look to us like log cabin patchwork.  The portrait of her face is original and was painted on linen.  It has been painstakingly restored.  (Click HERE for more information.)

What would you think if you saw this price tag on a quilt?  Would you grab it, pay, and run home?  That's what my eldest daughter did when she found not one but TWO quilts priced $1.00 each at a rummage sale.  And then she gave them to me!

Here's the first one.  Barbara Brackman identifies this pattern as Baby Bunting, and it was available from the Ladies Art Company from the 1890s through 1926.  I estimate the quilt to be from this period as well, judging from the fabrics.

It's hand pieced and hand quilted.  Can you imagine cutting out all those tiny little triangles?  It must have been a labor of love.  I believe the triangles were once a brighter red that has faded (very common for turn of the century non-Turkey red).  I'm a little confused about the tannish brown, which is not a usual color for the time period.  Has it also faded, possibly from green?

But, the quilting thread is brown.  The only damage besides the fading is the narrow binding, which is also brown.  Maybe it was red and brown all along?  Hm, it's a mystery.  

Less mysterious is this sweet old Double Nine Patch from the 1930s.  The nine patches are set with yellow, which makes it on theme for the RSC today, and the alternate blocks are a lovely lavender.

The blocks are about 8 in. square, or less, and the tiny squares are an inch or under.  The fabrics are scraps typical of the time period.  It's hand pieced, except for the borders which were added by machine, and is hand quilted.

The quilting has helped to keep the quilt together despite heavy use.  There is lots of fading and damage to the fabrics, especially in the lavender alternate squares and the border.  It has been rebound in recent years.

Neither of these quilts are museum pieces, but I think they're worth more than a dollar!  Many thanks to my thoughtful sharp-eyed daughter.

Lastly, here's something I've been working on instead of quilting!  Hubby and I really like jigsaw puzzles.  We leave them out on the kitchen table and add pieces as we walk by or after the kids go home.  I bought this one in an Oxford bookstore, it came in the cloth pouch to the right.  Only 500 pieces, but it was tough with all those colors, and it was possible to fit pieces in the wrong place!  When it was done we felt a real sense of accomplishment.

I hope you feel that way this week, even about something as silly as a puzzle!  Happy quilting!

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

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

Four Patch Round and Round

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Can you believe November is almost over?  This year is really flying by.  Today is the last Saturday of the month, so that means it's time for an antique quilt from my collection.

I don't have a pattern name for this one, as I couldn't find it in any of my books.  I just call it Four Patch Round and Round.  Technically it would be called a Medallion or Frame quilt.

It was made by an unknown quilter in the 1930s/1940s, and I bought it in an antique mall.  I love the scrappiness of it.  The center is made of 3 identical four patches, surrounded by a round of solid white, then a round of light blue 4 patches.  This was the only row she/he fully color coordinated.

The four patch blocks are 3 in. square finished, and the white rows are the same, except for the last white row, which is 4 in. finished.

All 4 corners on the last 4 patch row are pieced with black polka dot print, which adds a sort of framing effect.

The final border is made up of the same size squares alternating with red and white gingham.  Instead of a binding, the back has been brought over the front and stitched down neatly by machine.

There is a lot of quilting in this quilt!  Every little square has an X quilted through it.  The stitches are neat and average about 7-8 stitches per inch.

The quilting designs in the white rounds are pretty, but they are too sparse to completely keep the cotton batting from shifting where there are no stitches.  It's really not very noticeable, though.

Most of the prints are the usual florals, plaids, stripes, and dots.  This is the weirdest one.  I wonder if this kid is from the comics section in the newspaper??

I've often thought I'd like to make a similar quilt, maybe with bright fabrics.  It would even work for a Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt, with a different color in each round.  I might actually try this!

Not much sewing got done this week, but I am finally starting to set the 16 patch blocks into rows. 

It's been fun using up these multicolored prints.

I hope all of you who celebrated Thanksgiving had a good one.  One minor thing I'm thankful for is a freezer!  On Wednesday I thawed out all of this:  bread for stuffing, chicken broth for basting the turkey, and pumpkin and cherries for pies.  We are still eating pumpkin pie.  I might have had a piece for breakfast yesterday.  The joys of the season.

The thing I'm most thankful for, of course, is our wonderful silly family.  Little Buddy took this photo of his mom and aunt, my amazing daughters.

And here's Little Buddy himself, cuddled up with Snicklefritz, our new kitten.

The holiday craziness has started for real now.  We're going to try to take it slow, and enjoy it. 

I hope you have time for all the things you enjoy this week.

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

I'm also thankful for Linky parties!  Check these out!

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Light Blue Scraps, and Antique Scrap Quilts

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Sorry about being gone last week.  I went to a family reunion in New Jersey.  More about that next week.

Did you guess this was a pinker?

First, a little bit about this fun little device.  It's a Singer pinker, a clever gadget that cuts a pinked edge into fabric, leather, even paper.  I put a picture of one up on last week's very abbreviated blog.

The fabric fits under the cutting wheel, and you turn the crank.  Unfortunately mine doesn't have the original clamp that would hold it to the table, so when I use it I always wish I had one more hand. 

It was popular in the 1930s, and is much easier to use than pinking shears in my opinion, even without a clamp to hold it to the table.  For more information, click HERE.

Meanwhile, I was piecing my light blue scraps into my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects.  This one is Razzle Dazzle.

As usual, it's a sort of organized chaos.  So much fun to sew!

And lastly, the light blue crayon, shown here on my refrigerator.  (It's really hard to find a place to photograph it!)

I only have a very small scrap of the penguin fabric, so I made sure to put it near the top.

I can't believe it's almost time to put the RSC quilts together!  This year has gone by so fast.

And so has this month!  Here we are at the last Saturday of September.

So that means it's time for antique quilts.

Recently I bought this little top from another collector who was "thinning the herd".

Here it is laid out on a queen sized bed.  Even with a border, it will be a small quilt when finished, suitable for a crib or for display.

The pattern is Ocean Waves, pieced by hand, with yellow solid squares.  The fabrics date from the 1930s/1940s.  There are literally thousands of half square triangles.

As you can see from the ruler, these hsts are less than an inch square!  I cannot imagine cutting all these triangles by hand, let alone piecing them.  Maybe that's why the quilt isn't any bigger--it was just too much work!

Here's the back, with all those tiny seams.

I plan to finish this top with vintage backing, cotton batting, and some simple machine quilting.  But first, I have to figure out how I'm going to finish the edge.

For our second quilt, I chose another scrap quilt from the 1930s, but it is very different than the first one.

At first glance, it looks like just random scraps sewn together.  It's actually more organized than that.

The rectangular scraps are sewn vertically into strips about 3 inches wide in every other row.  The adjoining rows have the rectangles sewn horizontally in segments approximately 3 in. x 4 in., and then joined together across the quilt.

Here's the yardstick for a reference.  I believe many of these scraps to be from feed and/or flour sacks.  There are also dress prints, and even flannels.

All of the sewing here is by machine.  It's not quilted, but tied with red wool yarn instead.  In place of batting, there is a thin piece of flannel between the layers.

Check out the back!  This is a true scrap quilt.

I bought this quilt at a flea market, and I must admit, I just sort of felt sorry for it.  At the time, I was doing an annual bed peel at our quilt group's quilt show, and I needed examples of more "homely" quilts, ones that were made from whatever was on hand, to keep people warm and comfortable. 

It wasn't until I got home with it that I started looking more closely at how it was made.  Now I'm thinking this might be a fun idea for a new quilt.  It would definitely use up scraps!

Here's another fun idea--playing with trains with my Little Guy.

I hope you're having fun in the week ahead!  For my money, quilting is the most fun of all.

All the best,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

I can't wait to see what everybody's been up to this week!

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge  

Cynthia at Oh Scrap