Churning Through the Scraps

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

I picked up the kit for these Churn Dash blocks at a quilt group meeting in April.  They were made from 1930s reproduction fabrics donated to the group.  I sewed the blocks on my treadle and put them together with yardage from my stash.  One of our volunteer long arm quilters will quilt it, and it will eventually be donated locally.

These colors and prints are so cheerful.  A quilt appraiser friend once told me the impression most people have of 1930s fabrics is lots of pastels, and there are plenty, but there was also widespread use of what she called "crayon colors", like red, orange, and dark blue.

The kit didn't include white squares for the centers, so I added the solid color ones.

Here's my favorite block, the one on the right.  It's made from a colorful fruit print, plus an orange solid square.  It's the only one like it in the quilt.

Orange is our Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month, and I am so glad!  I really love orange, and try to find orange fabric wherever I can. 

This week I pulled out all the big scraps, little scraps, fat quarters, etc. to start cutting.  (Does your ironing board collect mess like mine does?)

I started with Bright Hopes, since that's the easiest/fastest one.  The Hot Wheels rectangles came from Mr. M, who donated so much wonderful stash/scraps/etc. to our guild.

I'm having less time to sew now.  Want to see why?

These wild hooligans are off school for the summer.  Thank goodness we've been able to get outside most days to run off some of their energy.

I've also had a big project to work on:  cleaning out my quilt stuff in the basement.

Remember this from last week?

All of these vintage scraps have now been sorted.  Many of them were actually useless, just tiny scraps or low quality fabric, or had stains or other problems.  The bad ones have been trashed and the decent ones I didn't want/need were bagged up for the museum sale (drop off next week).

Here's what I kept:

The bag is full of feedsack strips for a string quilt.  The larger pieces of fabric next to the bag are left over from dresses I made for my oldest daughter back in 1979.  All the rest are scraps from 1930s to 1960s or so.

These are some of the fun fabrics I kept.  Bears in canoes, purple strawberries, and a floral print with what looks like the Liberty Bell on it.  I love weird stuff, old or new.

I also salvaged a rainbow of solid scraps.  They will be put to good use!

Every year, the Humane Society has a huge rummage sale at the county fairgrounds.  Last year I scored a vintage iron there for a dollar, and it lasted nearly a year.  This year I got this little G.E. iron for only 50 cents.  It's slightly smaller than my regular iron, and is a Dry Iron, so no steam.  This is perfect for me, I don't even use steam.  We'll see how long it lasts.  I feel like I've already gotten my money's worth.

The book I found at the sale is called Quilts From the Heart:  Quick Projects for Generous Giving, by Karin Renaud.  I had never seen this book before, but it's absolutely perfect for me!  Simple patterns, bright colors, and the author even loves novelty prints.  How did I miss this?  It was published in 2006.  I gladly paid 50 cents for it, and have already started one of the quilts.

Good news:  Mrs. Pfaff is back!!  My dear "coworker" and beloved sewing machine is back from the repair shop and sewing again.  I can't wait to get some quilting done.  But first I need to go to the Farmers Market, so I'd better wind this up.

Thanks for reading this long-winded spiel! Have a lovely week!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Check out all the great blogs at these linky parties!

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Adventures in Fan Quilting

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

This week, I tried to learn something new.

It's actually something old--fan quilting.  We mostly call it Baptist Fan now, but that term is relatively recent.  In the late 1800s, when the quilt above was probably made, they may have just called it fan quilting or shell quilting.  (Click HERE for a great article on fan quilting.)

Many years ago, I made a Churn Dash quilt and hand quilted the fans.  I used a string and a piece of chalk to mark the arcs just like they did the in old days, which sometimes turned out okay and sometimes was a mess.

This is the finished quilt.  I think it should be have been more closely quilted.

I have a friend who is very good at doing fan quilting, free-hand, on her long arm machine.  She quilted this star quilt for me.

I've often wondered if I could do this kind of quilting on my domestic machine.  I don't do free motion quilting (yet?), but it seemed like these would be easy curves I could sew with Mrs. Pfaff's built-in walking foot.

So I bought this template.

It's called Around the Block, by June Tailor.  It's a hard plastic template, which should hold up well, and I liked all the lines for positioning it.  I decided to try it on my Shoofly quilt, one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilts for this year.  The blocks were already set with paisley squares, and divided into 3 sections of 3 rows each, spray basted to the batting and backing.

I was ready to get started, but I had one BIG problem.  If you use a template, you have to mark the quilt.  I dug out all my marking tools.

The chalk pounce worked fine, but the marks wore off as I was quilting.  The template's channels were too narrow and deep for my marking pencils.  Or chalk markers.  Or soap slivers.   They were obviously designed for those special quilt marking pens or markers.

I needed the marks to be visible on dark fabrics, light fabrics, and the paisley squares between the blocks.  The blue marker did okay on the light fabrics, but was invisible on the dark fabrics and blended in to the paisley.

I was tearing my hair out.  Did I need two markers, one light and one dark?  What if one kind needed to be removed by washing and the other by pressing with an iron?  It would be easy to mix that up and end up with permanent marks on the quilt.  I bought several markers, and kept trying (and failing).  Until I finally tried the purple disappearing marker.

Eureka!  It works!  I haven't used these kinds of markers in a long time, just for fear the marks wouldn't come out, but desperate times call for desperate measures.  The purple is visible even on the dark fabrics, and shows up very well on the paisley.  And so far, the purple is disappearing nicely after the quilting is done.  I will be sure to wash the quilt as soon as I get it finished.

Once I solved the marking problem, the quilting was actually easy.   One section is done, and I'm working on the second section.

Here's what it looks like on the back.

So that's what I'll be doing this weekend.

I dug out another of my home made kits to use as leaders and enders while I'm setting the Text Me A Quilt blocks into rows.  It's a double 4 patch, made from mostly reproduction 1800s scraps.  Once I get the small squares into 4 patches, I have to choose a pair of large squares to go with them to finish the block.  I found myself singing the Matchmaker song from Fiddler on the Roof as I did this.   (Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match ...!)  When I was a teenager, my entire family performed in a local production of the musical, and it was fun to remember it.

I'm setting the 4 patches so the light fabric chains across the block.

Little Buddy asked me to take his picture with his new "friends".  He's adopted these bears who have been living in our basement for years.  The little one belonged to his big brother, now a teenager, and the big one was his mother's.  He snuggles with them for his naps.

It's colder here this week.  Thank goodness we have quilts to keep us warm!  Have a lovely week, and stay safe.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches 

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Cynthia at Oh Scrap