Spiky Stars and Simple Houses

Welcome to Treadlestitches, a blend of old and new.  

It's a snowy day today, but the plows are out, even in our neighborhood, so we're not exactly snowed in.  I'm thinking warm thoughts of rainbows--specifically the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I love the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!

If you've been here before, you may have seen these spiky stars.  They were one of my quilts for the RSC last year.  As I made the blocks each month, I layered and quilted them.  Once I made the last blocks, I was ready to start on putting them together.

The whole project suffered from what I call back-burneritis, meaning I kept putting it on the back burner while I worked on something else.  This week I moved it to the front burner, and finally Got It Done.

Above you can see how I quilted the borders.  I often use Golden Threads paper to mark the border quilting design, but when I ran out of it, I remembered I had a roll of this in the basement.

  It's called Borders Made Easy.  (Click HERE to go to their web site.) I have had it for MANY years, and I wasn't sure how it would work.  There were peel and stick strips on the back to stick it to the quilt, and the glue actually hadn't dried out while being stored.

Here it is, stuck to the border.  The pile of paper is the peel part of peel and stick.  Once it's on the quilt, you just sew right through the paper.  This makes it very easy to see the lines.  However, it is NOT fun ripping this paper off.  I definitely should have sewn with smaller stitches.  And I'm going to have to get out the vacuum cleaner to get up all the little pieces of paper.

Here's the whole quilt, laid out flat.
So, that's one done from 2019.
What about 2020?

I've got 3 projects going for the 2020 RSC, and this is the third one--simple house blocks in 1930s fabrics.

I'm using both repro prints and vintage prints/feed sacks.

The pattern is fun and easy, and comes from this magazine, still (I think) available in stores.

The pattern quilt is called Home Made, is made from flannel, and has some upside down houses.

I don't think I'll be turning my houses upside down, but we'll see.  A topsy turvy house would just about describe my lifestyle!
I can't thank Angela enough for guiding us through the colors each month, and hosting a linky party for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  It is so much fun using up scraps to make quilts.  You can come, too, you know.  It's never too late to join!
Linking up with
Angela at So Scrappy
Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday
Cynthia at Oh Scrap 

Little By Little

Little by little, things get done, right?  Well, at least some things.  Many (many!) other things are waiting, but my second quilt for the Socorro Foundation is finished.  (Click HERE for information on the Socorro Foundation quilt/pillowcase drive.)

It's a very simple quilt.  I just took bright 2 in. strips out of the scrap bag, pressed them, cut them into 6.5 in logs, and sewed a 4-rail fence block.  Thirty blocks plus a 2 in. finished border makes a quilt 34 in. x 40 in., which meets the requirements.

Here's the back, another print I bought from my friend's friend.  You can see the grid quilting here, too.  The lines are 1.5 in. apart.  That should help it hold together in the wash.  I used this same fabric to back my first Socorro quilt.

See the Toucan?  That strip was cut from what was left of the animal fabric after making the first quilt.  Scraps just keep on giving.
So I got to use bright novelty prints, which I love, in that little quilt.
I got to use my black reproduction fabrics, which I also love, in these blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Quilt challenge.  The colors, as we're finishing up the year, are black and brown and gray.  I've already done my brown blocks.

Block 1 has a fancy print center that's been in the 4.5 in. squares box forever.

Block 2 has a humble gingham for its center.  Really more my style than fancy.
So now all my blocks for this quilt are done AND quilted!  I still have to cut sashing plus batting and backing for the sashing, before I can start putting it together.  And then I'll have to decide what to do about the border.

Where did all this fabric come from?  This is what got added to the stash this week.

Wednesday was guild meeting, and this month was our annual silent auction.  Each person can bring up to 3 bundles/boxes/piles of stuff, and we all have a chance to bid on them.  Highest bid at the end wins!  I won these gorgeous plaids, orange, green, and blue, each over a yard.  Woot!

I also won this collection of miscellaneous stuff.  I'm keeping the needles, pins, small scissors, and of course the feedsack scraps.  The interfacing and embroidery transfers will find a new home.
Even better than the stuff I won was getting rid of the stuff I brought!  I might have put some chocolate in the boxes I brought to spark some interest (this is always a good ploy).  The guild made over $400.

A friend found this tractor fabric at a sale, and thought of my Little Buddy, who is obsessed with tractors.  Now I'm thinking about making him a farm quilt.
Like I don't have anything else to make!  Well, we can't control when inspiration strikes, can we?

Have a wonderfully inspiring week ahead!
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches
Linking up with:
Angela at Soscrappy
Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday
Sarah at Can I Get a Whoop Whoop
Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Thanks to the Squirrels

Once we get to October in Wisconsin, we really can't deny that fall is here.  Sure, there are still green leaves on most of the trees, but we know it won't be that way at the end of the month when little costumed creatures come begging for treats.

I'm trying to stay more "in the moment", and enjoy fall without my usual dread of the coming winter.  This little "squirrel" is helping me--a fall table runner for the dining room.

I saw one like it on the internet (don't lots of quilts start out like that?), but there was no pattern.  So I made up my own, and added the borders on the ends to make it longer and to include a leaf print.  Just about any 8 in. block would do for this kind of runner.  I made 10 blocks and set them side to side.  Many of the pieces are 2.5 in. squares from those little packets you see at quilt shops.  Some, especially the cheddar ones, are from the scrap bag I bought at Quilt Expo last month.

The back was a larger scrap I've had for a while.  I had to piece it Frankenstein style to make it both long enough and wide enough.

We decorated for Halloween this week, with Little Buddy's help. There are plastic skeletons everywhere.

As long as I'm avoiding working on the big Wagon Trail quilt (see last post), I might as well make some spiky stars.  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge colors for October are brown and black.  Here are my brown ones.

Brown is a great color for 1800s reproduction quilts.  Antique quilts with lots of brown in them were generally made before 1900, when brown fell out of fashion.

I have lots of brown repro scraps in my stash, so I made sure to use two colors in each star instead of just one.

Gotta love stripes.

My windowsill garden is still blooming, except for the poor African violet I am trying to resurrect.  Do you see the blunt tips on the aloe plant?  One of my grandsons likes to snip off the tip and drink the juice.  The plant doesn't mind at all, and neither do I.

I hope you have a lovely week ahead, and if any squirrels come to call, tell them I said hi.

Linking up today with:
So scrappy
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Alycia Quilts
Oh Scrap

In Praise of Purple

It's purple month!  The color for September for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is purple.

What an amazing color!  It's an exciting range from pale lavender to deep dark grape.

What kinds of things besides flowers are purple?  We found a purple cow at the Linden Sculpture Garden in Mequon, Wisconsin.  (Little Buddy is not really feeding it.)

Sometimes green beans aren't green at all.   I am amazed at all the beautiful colors of the vegetables at the farmers market.

These are my purple quilt blocks this week, two spiky stars.

I make these stars with reproduction fabrics, and I really didn't have very many purple scraps.  So I used whatever I had, and only made two blocks.

The center of this block is the very last scrap of this purple stripe.  It doesn't exactly match the spiky points, but I don't care, I just like it.  When it's done, I'll run my hands over it and remember where it came from.
As you can probably tell, these blocks are not just pieced, they are quilted.  All along, I have been making blocks in the RSC color of the month and quilting them.  Soon I'll be ready to start putting them together with sashings and cornerstones and borders.
I absolutely LOVE quilting by the block.  It is so fast!  It only took half an hour to do both of these.

This is what the back looks like.  As you can see, the quilting is very simple.  I do it in one continuous line, without breaking the thread.
I cut my pieces of batting and backing a little differently than most people (I'm just like that.)
The blocks are 12.5 in. unfinished.  I cut the batting squares 12 in., so there is no batting in the seam.  This makes the seam lie flatter.  Then I cut the backing squares to 13.5 in.  It gives me a little more fabric to work with when I do the hand stitching after the sashings are added.

Soon the weather will turn, here in Wisconsin.  The flowers will be gone again, only to reappear in spring.
In the meantime, we'll enjoy the color in our quilts.

I'm wishing colorful fabrics and quilts for you this week, either making or appreciating.
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:
Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Alycia at Alycia Quilts
Angela at So Scrappy
Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Scraps of Cadet Blue

Does this look tempting to you?  It did to me!  This is the contents of a scrap bag I bought at Ye Olde Schoolhouse quilt shop in Cedarburg, WI, a couple of weeks ago.  Believe it or not, all this reproduction fabric was crammed into a gallon ziplock bag.

This is where I stashed the scraps when I got home--my scrap processing center aka bushel basket.

And here's what it looks like this morning on my sewing room floor.  I am combing through the mess, looking for reproduction cadet blue pieces.

If you love antique quilts and/or like making reproductions, you probably already know about this book, Clues in the Calico by Barbara Brackman.  She defines cadet blue as a lighter blue,  popular from around 1890 to 1925.  The reason we call it cadet blue is because that's how it was described in the Sears catalogs of that era.

The Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog was the Amazon.com of their day.  But can you imagine ordering items based on black and white drawings, like this one for fabric?

The text tells us the colors and the type of fabric (cotton, silk, flannel, etc.).

This add caught my eye when I bought this catalog several years ago.  It's for a Minnesota A sewing machine in a fancy cabinet.

And here's a very similar machine in my dining room.  Somebody, over a hundred years ago, ordered this machine from Sears, I'm sure.  It passed through several hands before a friend and I picked it up in northern Illinois.  By the way, it still works perfectly.

But I digress.  What was I going to do with the cadet blue scraps?

Roscoe stars!  (Click HERE for my first post on this project.)  I am reproducing a quilt I saw in an antique mall in Beloit.  Many of the blocks were made from dark indigo blue prints, but some of them were light blue.  I don't have enough of most cadet blues to make the whole star, but I like the scrappy look anyway.

So far, I have 3 of these light blue blocks done.
This is definitely the month to make these.  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for August is light or bright blue.
As long as I was sorting out these blues for the Roscoe stars, I got started on my spiky stars for the month.

Two out of three ain't bad, right?  (Hey, Meatloaf said so!)
Last Saturday at this time, I was flying over the Atlantic, heading back from Paris.  I promise, I will post about that soon.  But today, I'm just so happy to be home, digging through the scraps.

I'm wishing inspiration and relaxation for you all this week.
Cheers for reading this,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:
Angela at Soscrappy
Myra at Busy Hands Quilts
Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Cynthia at Oh Scrap