Kid Quilt and More Multicolor Blocks

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

This little quilt is finished at last.  I showed the top a couple of weeks ago.  A big stack of these blocks were donated to our quilt group, and I finished some of them into a child's quilt to donate.

In my head, I call this The Paw Patrol Quilt, because of this block in the upper left.  It was on top of the stack when I received them.  I chose 12 additional blocks from the pile, looking for other kid prints and bright colors, and made 7 more from my own scraps.

The block pattern is a Disappearing Nine Patch, using 3.5 in. unfinished squares instead of the more usual charm squares.  Because the pieces are turned after they are cut, it's a challenge to get any one way prints (like these dinos) all going the same way.  I had to figure it out and write down which way to turn the squares.  (I still messed it up a couple times lol.)  I do like this block, and may make it again sometime.

The blocks were a little wonky, so I had to trim them down to be the same size.  They would not have lined up properly if set side by side, so I added the narrow sashing. 

The backing is regular cotton, but was once made into a tablecloth at a girl scout camp.  A friend recently passed the tablecloths onto me to use as backing, and it has worked well.  They must not have used the tablecloths very much at all.  (I used another tablecloth on the back of the Jumping Jacks quilt I showed at the end of August.)

This is such a fun time of year for those of us who participate in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  It's time to start putting quilts together from the blocks we've made all year!  I am working on a couple, but I'm also still making blocks!

This week I made multicolor string blocks.  The colors are even brighter than this photo appears.

Pure chaos!  Wild and crazy.

Smaller pieces make up the Grocery Chain strips sewn on actual grocery receipts.

Still crazy!

These 3-D Flying Geese are a little calmer, thanks to the white background.

So now, am I done making RSC 2024 blocks?  Maybe!  How about you?

Last Sunday, Hubby and I went to the big quarterly flea market in Elkhorn.  It was perfect weather, just a lovely day.

Lots of beautiful quilts were displayed for sale.  Prices were reasonable for the most part.

None of them came home with me, although the rose quilt on the right was very tempting!  I'm no longer collecting quilts.  But I can still enjoy looking.

I found yet another cool block I might like to make!  I saw this in Serenity Quilt Shop in Kenosha Wisconsin recently.  They had kits made up for the blocks, too.  There were blocks with bright colors like this, and...

soft floral prints like this!  Hey, I have soft floral prints!  I keep telling myself I can't make EVERYTHING.  But I keep trying!

No photos of the grandsons this week, sorry.  They were sick two days, and not here very long after school otherwise.  Nothing serious, just the usual bugs kids get when school starts, and they're perfectly well now.  Next week they have a day off school, and we're going to make Halloween cookies and go to the apple orchard.

Thanks so much for reading!  Have a lovely week!

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy 

Jumping Jacks And The Last Saturday of Orange

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

The grandkids are back in school, this time both of the little ones go all day.  You'd think this would mean more time for quilting, right?  And it would, if I wasn't so far behind on jobs I need to do around here.  I did get this little Jumping Jacks quilt finished Friday morning.

The pattern came from this book, Quilts in Wales by Kaffe Fassett.  I enjoy his quilt books, and usually get them from the library, as they're kind of expensive.  The fabrics are wonderful, the photography is lush, so they're great to dream over even if you never make anything from them.  This one had several patterns I wanted to try.  After returning it to the library, I just had to have my own copy.

As you can see, this is a simple quilt to make.  The block is often called Hour Glass, and is made of 4 triangles.  Mine is smaller than Kaffe's, and I used the Companion Angle ruler to cut the triangles.  

For the triangles, I used only Kaffe Fassett fabrics and solids.  The music note fabric was just for fun, and the border is a non-Kaffe print.  Many years ago, my friend Debbie C. (hi, Debbie!) introduced me to Kaffe Fassett fabrics at a quilt show.  She makes amazing art quilts, and these prints bursting with color have lots of impact.  At the time, I was mostly making reproduction quilts.  I loved browsing in booths that displayed the fabrics, but I wasn't sure how I would use them.  That has changed!

Here's the back, a colorful bug print given to me by a friend.  It was recycled from a tablecloth!  The binding is a solid aqua.  I'll be donating this quilt locally.

Of course there are orange blocks in the quilt!  I really love orange.

Orange month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is always one of my favorites.  I had lots of fun piecing these bits and crumbs onto my grocery receipts.  I'm starting to think of some ideas of how to use these strips in quilts.  About time!  The end of the year is coming fast.

We recently renovated our tired 1970s bathrooms in neutral colors, mostly gray and white.  That meant I could accent with any color, and I wanted something bright for the en suite.  Of course I chose orange!  The shower curtain was the brightest one I could find around here, and I was surprised and delighted to find orange towels.  I bought the rug at Goodwill when my friend Joey and I went to Sun Prairie a couple of weeks ago.  

I love this color scheme for now, and I love how I can easily change it later if I tire of it.  Maybe next time I'll choose purple!

Happy Birthday again to our lovely granddaughter, now officially a teenager!  Shown here with her wonderful parents.

The sweet corn is ripe and delicious!  We may have a couple more weeks of it.  These ears went into the freezer after we ate a few for dinner.  I'm off to the Farmer's Market this morning to get a few more, and maybe some cucumbers for Bread and Butter pickles.

Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful week!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Windmills, Strings, and Grocery Chains

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  How are your projects coming along?

Our vacation in Vienna, Austria, was wonderful (a few photos below) but as always I'm glad to come back to my quiet regular life.   That includes quilting, of course!

I made this little Windmill quilt before we left, from a pattern shared at our quilt group by our Block of the Month leader Nancy Queen of Scraps.  It's an easy pattern using 2.5 in. x 4.5 in. rectangles in light and dark to make 8 in. finished blocks.

The border is an aqua print (last month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge color!) printed with colorful and probably fanciful poison dart frogs.  I bought several frog print remnants at a yard sale last year, no idea what the lady was making with it.

What about this wild print on the back?  It was also a second hand purchase, this time at the big museum sale I'm always talking about.  I get a big chunk of the fabric I use for kid quilts from that sale every year.

There are even a few orange blocks in the little quilt for this month's RSC color.

I really love orange!  Pulling out the big chunks of orange scraps is as far as I've gotten on August's color, but I'm looking forward to getting started.

Meanwhile, I've got some of last month's aqua blocks to finish up, like these string blocks.  I'll probably make some more since I have lots of strings to use up.

Oops!  Two of last month's grocery chain strips are pretty short.  I make them by sewing small scraps on receipts from the grocery store.  We were stocked up pretty well in July plus I bought veggies from the farmer's market, and then we were out of town, so I didn't buy as much.

Here's a little orange, from a garden in Vienna.  All these lovely flowers were surrounding a fountain near the natural history museum.

So that's the segue into a few vacation photos! 

We stayed in the city center of Vienna, near St. Stephen's Cathedral, which was begun around 1160 a.d.  The roof tiles are hexagons, which as a quilter I enjoyed very much. 

This is the view outside our hotel window.  The architecture in this part of Vienna is just stunning.  Even ordinary shops or offices might have statues and gargoyles if they're in an old building.  I admit to doing a lot of gaping and pointing.

We did most of our sightseeing in museums.  I'll add a few other pictures in later posts.

Isn't this adorable?  These mosaic designs were made by children with the help of the Kiwanis Club of Vienna.  We happened upon this in Stadt Park, the main city park.  All four sides of this column are covered with the mosaics.  It makes me think of how important all kinds of artistic expression are to all of us humans, young and old and in between.

Look what I found in our park here in Wisconsin!  I took this photo of the boys before we left.  We've been having fun outside in the good weather.  Can't wait to see them again on Monday!

Good luck with orange this month if you are participating in the RSC!  I hope all your projects are going smoothly.  And if not, put them in time out and do something fun!  Have a great week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

 

Rainbows and Blue Skies

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Here's my small Rainbow Rails quilt, finished just in time for Pride Month, and hanging out on my front porch.

I got the pattern from American Patchwork & Quilting magazine, issue #188, seen above.  Of course I didn't make it exactly the way the pattern says (do I ever?) but it was great inspiration.  Plus it used up lots of my light/low volume strips and solid colored strips.

How do you like this artistic swirl?  It's brought to you by Snicky the cat, almost seen here in the middle.

It was fun putting all these light prints in one quilt.  They usually get to be the backgrounds, hardly ever the starring roles.

The back is this Kim Schaefer fabric with lots of cute short words.  I finished up with a rainbow binding of more leftover strips.

Blue month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is nearly half over!  Yikes, time goes so fast!

Some blue rail fence blocks got sewn up.  I'm enjoying using both light and dark blues this month, it worked out well in these blocks.

These strips sewn on grocery receipts use all kinds of blue crumbs.  I have WAY more dark blue scraps than light blue, so I just mixed some light blue pieces in the dark blue strips and made one with just light blues.  Still not sure what I'm making with these.  Hope I figure it out by the end of the year!

So, this happened!  Again!  It was the big annual sale at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts.  Fellow quilters, you would have loved it!  I stocked up, as I guess you can see.  The column on the left is flannel, the rest are regular cottons.  It took me all day yesterday to wash and fold it all.

In the last several years, I have found that I really like buying and using second hand fabric in my quilts.  For one thing, it is SO much cheaper, which I appreciate since I'm giving away 90% of the quilts I make.  Also, it's like a treasure hunt finding kid-friendly fabric at flea markets, yard sales, etc., and I love when I find good pieces and "rescue" them.  It's recycling, right?

I'm going to try something new.  From June 2024 (now) to June 2025, I'm making it my mission to use mostly second hand fabric.  (It's not like I don't have any, lol!)  If I need to buy any new fabric, it will just be what I need for a specific project.  No stash building at the quilt store.  Wish me luck!

In other news, we had a perfect day at the ball park.  Hubby and I joined our eldest daughter, son-in-law, grandson and granddaughter at Sunday's Kenosha Kingfish game.  It was so much fun.

Even better than the game was the pregame show by this wonderful gymnastics group.  Our lovely and talented granddaughter Miss E. is on the far left as they're warming up.

Our weather here has been lovely, and we appreciate it so much after our cold winters.  I'm going to get a glass of iced tea and sit out on the porch.

Have a lovely week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Cats and Dogs and Elephants, Oh My

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Hey!  Who's under this quilt?  I just finished it this morning!

Oh yeah, I forgot, Snicky has a side job as a quilt quality control inspector.  That is of course in addition to his regular jobs of holding down our laps and waking us up at 5:00 a.m.  He's a busy guy.
 

I got carried away making these Uneven Nine Patch blocks last year for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  This is the second small quilt from these, and it uses 30 blocks.  The first quilt used 20.  There are still 51 more blocks!  What on earth was I thinking?

All of the blocks I chose for this quilt have animal prints in the center square.  There are pets, like cats and dogs and rabbits, zoo animals, farm animals, insects, birds, fish, dinosaurs, and sea mammals.  The blocks alternate dark and light centers. 

There are even animals on the back!  You might recognize this as "country look" fabric from the 1980s/1990s.  It's good cotton fabric, and I'm happy to have found a use for it.

Now I'll get the quilt washed and donated to a children's charity.  And then figure out what to do with the rest of the blocks.

The RSC color for June is blue (any blue!) which is great for me because I have so many blue scraps.  I'm just getting started making June's blocks, but these 3-D flying geese are easy and fast so I did them first.

Catch up is still happening with pink blocks.  I didn't have very many pink crumbs, so I only made two of these strips sewn on grocery receipts.

I may not be a big fan of regular pink fabric (yet?), but I have always loved double pink reproduction prints.  These hexies and triangles are cut with the Accuquilt cutter and are fast to sew.  I'm starting to get anxious to see all the colors together in the quilt, with those white stars peeking out.

A couple of months ago, a lovely lady (who used to be my son's English teacher) contacted our quilt guild about a local charity called Ebony Vision.  They have mentoring programs and a free lending library, with special activities for children. (Click HERE for an article about the organization.) Of course that caught my attention as I'm a retired school librarian.  We made a couple of quilts for them to use as a fund raiser, and now we're making book pillows.  The pillow covers (as seen above) have a deep pocket for books, lapped back flaps for easy insert and removal of the pillow, and a handle for carrying.

Our goal is 40 pillow covers done by our next meeting.  The pillows to go inside have already been purchased.  I couldn't attend the sewing day at the guild, but the amazing Colleen dropped off two kits plus instructions.  Those are the blue and green ones.  I also made the other two from guild fabric plus my fabric.

I had to include this red fabric with dinos and books!

There was some non-sewing activity here this week.  Little Guy "graduated" from preschool!  With all the excitement we couldn't get him to hold up the certificate for the photo, but it was such fun seeing the program the kids put on, with lots of happy singing. 

All the kids told the teachers what they wanted to be when they grew up.  

Here's what Little Guy said:

Those big trucks are really exciting.  Plus the man who collects the garbage in our neighborhood is very friendly, so maybe that's what influenced his choice.  I just want him to be happy in his work, whatever it is.

Have a happy start to a new month, with time for things you love to do.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap