Big Bright Hopes

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Big Bright Hopes is a flimsy!  You may remember me starting this one after our last guild meeting, when I was inspired by a block like this in the scrap pile on the free table.  The blocks were easy to sew as leader and enders while working on other projects.  (Sorry about the inside photos.  It's been raining all day today.)

I chose novelty print squares for the 5 in. (cut) centers, and bright colored strips in calmer prints to surround the centers.  The strips were cut 2.5 in. x 7 in.

When it comes to math, I like to keep it simple.  I needed 140 strips to make 35 blocks.  So if I chose 7 colors, I only needed 20 strips in each color.  Perfect!  

Big Bright Hopes will be approx. 50 in. x 67 in. when finished, and will be donated locally.

Speaking of big bright hopes, it was Little Guy's 6th birthday this week!

He posed for us, wearing the stickers he got at school for being the birthday boy and his classroom's Star of the Week.

After opening presents, the boys had fun with a musical birthday card.  

Too much excitement!  After they went home, I went back to the sewing room.

In honor of red week for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I made the red Dawn Chorus blocks.  Each big block is 4 small blocks put together.  This one has Bucky Badger and cows, appropriate for Wisconsin.

The novelty prints in this block are dogs and dog bones.

This one is my favorite.  The bird fabric came from the scrap tsunami (see last week's blog), there are lots of rabbits, and some dinosaurs and friends from the 1990s.  I don't think I'll ever run out of that dino fabric.

It's always fun to get out a new color of scraps at the beginning of the month.  I can't wait to see what everyone else is making.

In Progress

Remember the string blocks?  All 30 of them are done.  And because the strings were sewn directly onto a batting square, they are quilted as well.  I'm going to try a new-to-me technique with them, wish me luck!

These are the blocks I'm sewing in the photo with the string blocks.  It's a Lori Holt pattern she calls Twinkle Twinkle Scrappy Star.  I found a tutorial for it on her You Tube channel.  (Click HERE.)  All the print pieces for 30 blocks were in my box of 2.5 in. x 4.5 in. rectangles.  I had to cut most of the background pieces from strips and scraps.  It's a fun block to piece.

Good luck this week with all your projects.  Happy Quilting!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestiches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

And now, just a few words about quilts and politics.  Feel free to skip, I won't mind.

Today I spent some time watching the funeral of the Reverend Jesse Jackson on television.  It was sad to see the passing of such an important Civil Rights leader, but heartening to see and hear how many people were inspired by him to continue his work, including three presidents and a vice president.

He was familiar with quilts in his own background.  In two of his most famous speeches, he spoke about quilts as a metaphor for our country.  

In 1984, in his speech at the Democratic Convention, he said:

"America is not like a blanket - one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size.  America is more like a quilt - many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay and the disabled make up the American quilt."

Four year later, he again referenced quilting, with an example from his own life, as he emphasized finding common ground with each other. 

"America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth. When I was a child growing up in Greenville, South Carolina my grandmama could not afford a blanket, she didn't complain and we did not freeze. Instead she took pieces of old cloth - patches, wool, silk, gabardine, crockersack - only patches, barely good enough to wipe off your shoes with. But they didn't stay that way very long. With sturdy hands and a strong cord, she sewed them together into a quilt, a thing of beauty and power and culture."

[By the way, crockersack refers to a burlap bag.]

Later in the speech he said:

"Be as wise as my grandmama.  Pull the patches and the pieces together, bound by a common thread.  When we form a great quilt of unity and common ground, we'll have the power to bring about health care and housing and jobs and education and hope to our Nation."

I remember these uplifting speeches, and of course I loved the mention of quilts.  I also love the hope that we can find common ground with each other.  

We are more alike than we are unalike.

Back Home Again

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Did you have a good Halloween?  Very few kids live on our street anymore, so we only had a few trick or treaters.  Now we have lots of leftover candy, which may not be a good thing lol.

Just for fun, I went through my kid fabrics looking for Halloween prints, and this was all I found.  Most of these I've bought recently.  The blue one was in the fabulous pile given to me by my friend Joey.  I've had others, but used them up.

I am so lucky!  I got to spend last week with my wonderful Mom.  We talked and laughed, and even stayed up late one night.  Last Sunday we went to church, then out to my sister's house for a barbecue.

Of course I stopped by a quilt store while I was there.  This is getting to be the theme of my recent blog posts!  Normally I only visit quilt shops occasionally, but when I travel I like to see what shops in a new area are like.

The shop is Sew & Sews, Inc. in Oklahoma City.  It is a big shop, just full of lovely fabric.  The staff was welcoming and helpful, and prices were reasonable.

Want to see what I bought?  

Kid prints, light fabrics (I always need those), and a bright blue that might become sashing.

I'm happy with the loot, but it's time to stop shopping and get to treadling.  The bins are getting full!

I didn't do any quilting while I was at Mom's.  Since then I have unpacked, done a little laundry, and made a few string blocks.  These were a kit made up by our charity committee.  I'm enjoying the process, pulling the strips from a basket at my feet and sewing them to a cloth foundation with my trusty treadle.

While I was visiting, my Mom and sister and I went to the First Americans Museum.  It was amazing.  I highly recommend it.  We toured the gallery, learned about First Nations history, and saw artifacts made both long ago and recently.

These are toy cradle boards made by the women in a Kiowa family.  The colors and designs are so beautiful.

Look what happened while I was gone!  You might remember the Dead Plants Society from my Sept. 27 post.  Before I did all this traveling in October I got rid of the plants that were actually dead, and cleaned up the remaining three.  When I left there were buds on the Christmas (or Thanksgiving?) cactus, and now there are blooms!  I was overjoyed.   The geranium is going to bloom as well.  I promised all three of them to do a better job taking care of them.

I'll be staying close to home this week.  Visiting with family members at my cousin's funeral made good memories in spite of the sad circumstances. Spending time with my Mom and my sister's family was joyful.  I am glad to be back home again now, getting ready for the holidays.

I wish you joy this week in whatever makes you happy.  Like quilting!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

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 

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

  

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