Of Cats and Quilts and Puzzles and Books

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

If you visited Treadlestitches last year, you might remember all the cat blocks I was making for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I got carried away (so not unusual for me)!  It was so much fun to see these made up in all sorts of prints.  This is my third little quilt made from those blocks.

This time the cats alternate with a pieced block, with a multicolored cat print in the center.  The block is called Puss in the Corner, which is completely appropriate.  

Lots of the fabrics in the quilt are multicolored.  Some even feature things cats might like, such as sushi.  (Isn't it amazing how many different prints there are in the world?)

Snicky the cat decided to pose next to the quilt when I was taking pictures.

The blue inner border and the binding are both from my scraps, so they're in keeping with the RSC color of the month.  (Sorry for the dark photos.  It's a dismal day here, and the flash didn't help much.)

The back is this blue plaid.  Can you see the hint of sparkle in it?  It was recycled from a little-used tablecloth from a girl scout camp.

More blue scraps!  All of these hearts were made from pieces cut from my Big Scraps basket.  I seem to have more dark than light blues.

Ice cream cones, dinosaurs, butterflies, Thomas the Tank Engine, Curious George, etc.  The hearts will go into quilts to be donated to kids.  I hope they like these fun fabrics!

A quilter's cat needs to be ready at all times to inspect quilt blocks laid out on the floor.  Lizzy, our little quilter's cat in training, just came across these blocks by accident while chasing Purple Mousie, her favorite toy.  I'm sure she'll refine her technique in time.  

She and Snicky are working out their relationship with lots of running and chasing.  He objects (rightly!) to having his tail attacked.  They still spend some time each day apart.

The quilt blocks are Rail Fence blocks from last year's RSC.  So many blocks, so little time!

Last Friday, hubby and I spent the morning book shopping.  I bought this puzzle at Barnes and Noble, and we worked it right away.  It has two of my favorite things, cats and books.  There are STILL some leftover cat blocks in the RSC bin.  Maybe I could make a quilt like this?  Only simpler?  

Our next stop was Half Price Books, where I found all of these!  Lots of great ideas for future projects.

It's been a busy week, and it's about to get busier.  Today is the Winter Quilt Show in West Bend!  I will spend the morning enjoying the show and the vendors, and the afternoon working at the guild booth.  I hope I can remember to take pictures of the action for next week's blog.

Have a lovely quilty week, everyone!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these wonderful quilters:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

Strings and Rails and a UFO

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

This week I finished a new "antique" quilt.  I'm showing it here with some other antiques.  The pitcher and bowl belonged to my grandmother's adoptive mother, and it's sitting on a Minnesota A sewing machine from the 1890s.

Here's what I had when I started this quilt.  I don't know why I'm drawn to other people's UFOs, when I have plenty of them myself.  I saw this project at a sale, and really tried hard to leave it there.  It was a bag stuffed with these strips of little 4 patches (2 in. finished) and plain squares.  Only $10!  Of course I caved and bought it.

The project had to wait while I finished a few other things, but eventually I laid all the strips out on the table to decide on placement.  The original quilter had planned an on-point layout, but it looked like she had trouble figuring it out.  I had to do a little unsewing/resewing to get it right.

The fabrics in the top are 1930s reproductions.  I wanted the quilt to feel like an antique, so I added a border from my vintage stash.  The orange binding goes with the orange roses in the print.  And I would have used it even if it wasn't orange month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!

The quilting is a simple grid on the pieced area and a swag in the border. 

There are so many cute fabrics in these tiny squares!

The back is a 1930s repro from my stash.  More orange roses!

I'll be keeping this one.  It will go on my quilt ladder in the dining room.  I change them out seasonally.  This one looks like spring to me.

In other news, orange blocks for my RSC quilts.

String blocks are so much fun!  I make a giant mess sorting through the strings, but it's worth it.

I didn't realize before joining the Rainbow Scrap Challenge how many different shades of every color there are, like the oranges in these rail fence blocks.  I love including all the shades together.

We're getting close to the end of the year!  I can hardly wait to start putting the RSC blocks into quilts.

I spent last Saturday with a friend (hi, Joey!) and it was so much fun.  We had a lovely lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant, and then we went to a going-out-of-business sale at a quilt store.  It's always sad when a quilt shop closes, but we were happy to help them sell off their inventory at half price.  This was the loot I brought home.  Do you see the orange?  It's a Cat in the Hat Halloween print!

So I guess I broke my "only buying second hand fabric this year" rule.  Oh well, I can live with that for $6 a yard quilt shop novelty prints!  

The best thing about Saturday wasn't fabric, it was having time to talk and laugh and enjoy each other's company.

My little grandsons start school on Monday, so I guess the summer is almost officially over.  Last Wednesday we went to my older daughter's house to visit, and had a picnic at the Lake Michigan shore.  These goofy guys had fun climbing on the rocks and looking for fossils.

Wednesday was my granddaughter's 13th birthday!  I can hardly believe how grown up she is.  That's her standing next to me.  I'm keeping a "death grip" on Buddy who has been running around like a nut.  Both of the little boys are making silly faces.  We do have a lot of fun.

I hope you're having a lot of fun, too.  Good luck with your projects, and have a great week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

  

The Seersucker Quilt

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

The quilt guild I belong to does a lot of charity work.  We make quilts of all sizes, plus many other items like walker bags and wheelchair bags for nursing homes, bucket hats and port pillows for cancer patients, toiletry bags for foster children and unhoused people, flannel hearts for NICU babies, and recently book pillows for kids.  Because of this work people frequently give us fabric to make these items.  All kinds of fabric.  Including seersucker.

As you may know, seersucker is a light weight puckery fabric, meant to be worn in summer and/or hot climates.  It has gone in and out of fashion for more than a hundred years, and was originally made of 100% cotton, although now it's usually a blend.  Men's suits are still sometimes made of it.  I have had blouses and dresses of seersucker, and made dresses for my daughters with it when they were children.  Due to the puckered weave it doesn't need ironing.  By the way, the weird name comes from Persian for milk and sugar.  (Click HERE for the Wikipedia article.)

Can you make quilts from seersucker?  I had never thought of using seersucker to make a quilt until I saw a kit cut by our charity committee at a guild meeting.  It was for a baby quilt, which of course is right up my alley, so I decided to try it.  The squares were already cut, so I arranged them in identical vertical rows and offset every other row.

Then I trimmed off the top and bottom like this.  I didn't have any seersucker yardage for a border, and I wasn't sure about sewing anything else to it, so I left it like this.  The sewing was simple, and I didn't need to iron anything.

Here's the back, a regular 100% cotton print.  The batting is polyester.  I bound it with the same fabric.

I admit, I am a self-described cotton snob.  I was nervous about working with poly cotton, since some of them are flimsy and pill at the first washing, but the seersucker worked out okay.

And just look what was at the meeting this week--a kit cut from cute ocean-themed seersucker!  Yep, this one came home with me too.  I'm not worried about using it anymore, but I need to remember to turn down the iron temperature if I need to press.

I would LOVE to know if anybody else has made a seersucker quilt.  I don't think I've ever even seen one.

Aqua month progresses on!  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month had me pulling out  scraps to go with the parts department strips and rectangles this week.  

It was a good chance to use some Dr. Seuss fabric I've been saving.

More 3-D flying geese!

In other news, I attended a meeting of the Wisconsin Quilt Study Group last Saturday, held at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts in Cedarburg.

Our topic was white work quilts, which were amazing but sadly don't photograph well.  We always have show and tell of member's new acquisitions, and I snapped a photo of this amazing antique quilt.  Such tiny triangles, perfectly hand pieced, with lovely quilting!  The background is a light yellow, it's not showing up well on my monitor.  It dates to the 1930s or so.

These beautiful hollyhocks were on the museum grounds, with the old lambing shed behind them.

In even more other news, we had a birthday party this week.  Our eldest grandson turned 19!  He's the tall guy with the awesome hair, shown here with his family.  Buddy and Little Guy miss him now that he's moved into an apartment.  I can hardly believe how fast he's growing up.

At my age, years go by quickly anyway, but the summer just seems to zoom past!  How are we nearly to the end of July already?  

Have a lovely week, everyone!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday 

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap 

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

This Pieceful Life

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

How are your projects coming along?  For me, I have nothing finished this week, but some progress has been made.  Sometimes that's the best you can say!

Pink rail fence blocks will be handy when making up Rainbow Scrap Challenge baby quilts at the end of the year.  The pink 2.5 in. strips are almost gone.  (Is that a good thing?)

The butterfly quilt I'm making from an unknown quilter's UFO is almost a top!  I need to add the pieced border of half square triangles and the outer border from the vintage blue print.

Rainbow Rails is coming along as my leader and ender project.  For my version, I need nearly 100 of these little blocks.  I'm up to 62.
 

I was gone for a week to visit my mom, and we had out of town company this week, so I'm behind on everything, but it was totally worth it seeing people we love.

Maybe I'd get something finished if these pesky squirrels didn't keep popping up!

Now you see it, now you don't!  Watch out, this nine patch block is going to disappear. 

Ta da!  Now it's four blocks, complete with sashing and cornerstones.  I'm following the Self Sashing Nine Patch Quilt Tutorial from Jo Kramer at Jo's Country Junction blog. 

It's a good pattern for using up some random charm squares and other pink scraps.  I wish I had more of this cute puppy print.
 

Oops!  I did discover a problem that can happen if you use novelty prints, which are often one-way designs.  Upside down unicorns look kind of weird.  I fixed this with the seam ripper, but it can be avoided by placing the novelty square in the upper left corner of the nine patch block.

There has been a lot of traffic through our backyard in the early morning.  One day this week we saw a mother mallard with 13 baby ducks (we counted!) walk right across our patio.  Today there was a hen turkey, just sauntering along.  Two robins are fighting (or mating?) almost every day.  And I have no photos of any of it sadly.  Spring is wild around here.

I was so glad to see this Little Guy and his big brother when I got back.  We've had some thunder storms and cooler days, but also warm days just right for playing outside and popsicle parties on the porch.

So how are your projects coming along?  I look forward to seeing all the wonderful quilting at the linky parties below.  Have a wonderful week, and Happy Mothers Day to all the American moms.

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap