Seven Quilt Tops, a Few Blocks, and a Big Bag of Scraps

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

I wish it was a sunnier morning for this mini quilt show!  These are tops I made years ago that have been patiently waiting in my closet for me to quilt them.  Lately I have somehow come to my senses and realized I will never have time to finish them, so they will be donated to the Milwaukee Child Advocacy Center after being quilted by a volunteer.

The first 3 quilts were made from 2018-2019.

First up is this nine patch.  I really loved making this one.  My friend Debbie C. gave me the blocks.  The colors are wonderful, and there's a surprise when you get close up.

Five of the squares in each nine patch are four patches, made of blocks with similar bright colors!  I made the pieced border the same way.  I'm sure a child will love it.

Next is a heart quilt top, finished in 2019.  I think this is the first time I framed a pieced block with solid strips.  I didn't even know it was called a Happy Block until much later.  The strip border was fun.  I could never decide how to quilt it on my own, so I'm happy to pass it on for a good cause.

I used to get lots of quilt magazines, and the pattern for this quilt was in one of them.  I finished the top in the summer of 2018.  How do I know that?

Because I took this photo then, with my grandson Buddy sitting on it!  He was only 2 years old.  This is another top I couldn't figure out how to quilt.  A long arm quilter will have no such problem.

More tops!  These two were Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilts.  The patterns for both of them came from books. The one on the left was a RSC project for 2019.  It was pretty big, so I didn't add a border.  The one on the right was from RSC 2020. 

Last two!  On the left we have Sawtooth Star, which was also a 2019 RSC project.

The centers are 6 in. finished crumb blocks.  So much fun to sew!

I think this 16 patch is the oldest one of the bunch.  I used up lots of scraps from quilts I had made for my grandchildren.  I had thought to quilt it and keep it here for them, but other quilts got finished first.  We have no lack of quilts here!  It can go where it's needed.

That's the round up of the "ladies in waiting" that are no longer waiting in my closet!  This week I will be taking them to the volunteer who quilts them, and thanking her for all the hard work she does for such a good cause.

Oh no, it's the last Saturday of the month and my RSC blocks are not finished!  I only have these six yellow hearts done, and I haven't even started on the Sisters Choice blocks.  I could blame my lack of progress on my youngest grandsons, who were on spring break this week and here every day, but that wouldn't really be why.

Here's why--a new project!

I'm making log cabin blocks, with random width logs.  It is so much fun, and is using up all kinds of scraps.  I'll post more next week.

The basement clean out would be another good excuse, but I didn't get much done there either, except for sorting this big bag of solid colored scraps.  There were more packed in there than I thought!

Now they're at least sorted by color.  No surprise, the biggest pile is blue, and the smallest is pink!  I actually threw away pieces that were bad quality fabric and/or too small to fool with.  Progress!

Anyway, we had a very good week around here.  Thursday we went to a local park.  The boys stood on a bridge and asked me to take their picture fighting off an invisible monster.  Monster, you better run!

I left the quilt tops on the kitchen table last night, and woke up to this:

Our little Lizzy is a quilt lover.  I think you could say that about most cats!

Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful week!

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these lovely link party hostesses:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

Panel Pieces, Happy Blocks, and Bowties

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

  Yes, it's another Happy Blocks quilt this week.  I've actually lost track of how many of these I've made.  It's such a fun and easy design for a child's quilt.  This time it's a little different, because the centers are made from panel pieces.

Are you wondering what I mean by panel pieces?  Or do you also have a bag like this, full of off cuts and scraps of panels and striped fabric?  I was thinking about this bag after a conversation with my friend Joey brought up a stray thought.  What if I cut squares from the panel scraps and bordered them with solid colors?

I chose pieces from the bag that had similarly sized motifs and similar colors, in this case bright rather than pastel.  This animals panel was one of them.

This elephant came from that panel.  (Please excuse the loose thread I somehow didn't see when I snapped the photo!)

There were also a few striped pieces I could cut into squares.  This one had birds and butterflies and bugs and bees.

Here's how it turned out.

Two of my favorite panels/stripes got cut up before I thought of taking photos.  I love this cute little tiger and all his friends.  Even the snake.  The orange is brighter in person.

The tiger face in the aqua square was one of six animals in a panel scrap.  I'm not even sure where it came from.  I used all six.  I think kids will like them.

The blocks are 8 in. finished.  I'm not planning on adding a border, so the quilt will finish at 40 in. x 48 in.  I'm going to quilt this one myself and donate it to Project Linus locally.

Yellow month marches on lol.  I have loved making these big Bowtie blocks.

I had more fun yellow prints that I thought I did!

The dog square is my favorite.

I hope I'll have time to finish my yellow blocks this week, but I've started a big project that's taking a lot of time.  I'm doing a basement clean out of my quilting stuff.  This week it was the flannel fabric.  Above is a big bin with flannel pieces big enough for backing.  I've arranged them like this so I can open the lid and see just what I have.  (Thanks to Marie Kondo for the idea.)

Smaller pieces of flannels are arranged in these bins.  The small ones on the top hold strips and squares.  The rest are arranged by color within sizes of small, medium, and large.  I love seeing these bright prints, and I'm hoping it will inspire me to use them up.

This stack is less pretty.  More cut pieces on top, solid colored flannel in the blue bin, and scraps and larger strips in the green one.  Organized, and ready to use.  It feels good!

The cats are trying to "help" me.  Lizzie is inspecting a pile of wool fabric I'm re-homing.

Snicky worked so hard he had to go take a nap.

Yesterday I took Little Guy to the doctor.  He's had a cold and needed some meds for a potential ear infection.  It was the first time he ever wore a mask.  I thought he was cute, but he was not a fan.  I had to bribe him with Pokemon time to get him to keep it on.

Everyone with colds is on the mend, the weather is getting nicer, and spring break for my youngest grandsons is next week.  We're hoping good times will be had by all.

Including you!  Have a wonderful week!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these lovely ladies and their linky parties.  Come join us!

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Strings and Things

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Is it windy where you live today?  This was the best shot I could get of this quilt top on the clothesline.  (My hair was blown around too.  No photos of that!)

Here's what it looks like inside the house, calmly lying on the floor.  As you can see, it's a string quilt, made from blocks I sewed last year for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

I had so much fun making these blocks!  String quilts are addictive, at least for me.  I love sewing these skinny strips into something useful.  There are 54 blocks that finish at 6 in. each.   I set them in 9 rows of 6 each.  

This is my third quilt with last year's string blocks.  The colors chain across the quilt diagonally, which turned out to be the best way to use up the limited amount of remaining blocks.  There are still a few blocks left in the bin, but they don't go together well, and will have to wait for more string blocks to be made.

The border is the blue fabric.  The words on it are sounds cars make, like vroom and beep and honk and even ah-ooh-ga.  I bought it at a going-out-of-business sale at a quilt shop.  

The top is approximately 42 in. x 60 in., and will be donated to the Children's Advocacy Center.

Here's a quick look at the back.  I piece my string blocks on cotton fabric instead of the more usual paper.  I just hate tearing off the paper, but I'm happy to recycle ugly fabric, so this works for me.

This week's RSC blocks are the Highland Fling ones, from the book Dessert Roll Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott.  I wanted a good contrast between the center square and the outer triangles so I used white-based neutral squares, all with at least some yellow in them.  

By the way, I looked this block up in Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.  The construction is the same as #2560 which is called Windmill or The Radio Windmill.  The color placement is different.  It's also similar to Arabic Lattice, but with a square in the center instead of a 4 patch.  I'm going to start calling them my Radio Windmill blocks.

This one is my favorite!

This was a busy week!  Saturday we went to our grandson Little Guy's birthday party, and had a great time hanging out with family.

Doesn't he look grown up?  This was the only picture I managed to take.  I always get caught up in the moment and forget.

Monday my friend Joey came to visit.  We had a good time chatting and cutting up fabric.  And I still didn't take any pictures!

She also gave me a sack of ready-made binding.  Our quilt guild has a challenge to make a mile of binding for our charity quilts.  I'm getting this batch ready for this week's guild meeting.  The first one is 12 yards long!  Thanks, Joey!

Our grandson Buddy was sick for three days with a cold, low fever, and a cough, so he was here with us instead of going to school.  He was feeling well enough by the third day to get bored with watching TV, definitely on the mend. At the end of the day Thursday Little Guy was starting to come down with it too.  (Doesn't it always happen this way?)  I did all my sewing on Friday, when the kids were home with their mom.  Thank goodness those string blocks were already sewn.

Little Miss Lizzy loves sitting in the living room window, watching the birds.  

The grass is still brown, but there are buds on the big tree in the backyard.  Spring is coming!

I hope you're having a lovely week, whatever the weather.  Happy Quilting!

Thanks for reading this!

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Charm Saturday and Feelin' Thrifty

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Another Saturday, another quilt top!  I'm getting a few of them together before donating them to the Children's Advocacy Center, which helps kids who have been removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect.  The tops will then be quilted and given to the children to keep.

For this top, I'm using blocks I made during last year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge, the ones with the white corners.  I added colorful 5 in. squares, plus white print squares (the white squares have a very subtle butterfly print).  The design makes white stars across the top.

I did not come up with this design.  The original is a free Moda pattern called Charm Saturday (click HERE for the free pdf).  My quilt doesn't exactly follow this pattern, which has dark stars instead of white.  I took my inspiration from the variation done by Quilted Forest (Click HERE for the You Tube video).  The Quilted Forest version made light stars, and that's what made me see I could use these blocks.  My stars slant to the left, and I used just one light instead of several.  So I made a variation of a variation!  Quilters have been doing this forever.

I was really happy to use up so many of these leftover blocks from last year, and to add in some of my favorite home-cut charm squares, like the red print with Ninja children.  (Thanks, Debbie!)  The border is a bright-colored puzzle print.  We love working jigsaw puzzles around here.

Here's one of the reasons I'm feelin' thrifty this week:  the name of this block is Thrifty.  I'm making 5 each month.  My favorite is the one with the owl in the center.

Another reason to feel thrifty--I finally made cushions for my kitchen chairs.  The family has been complaining about these ladderback chairs for literally decades, but I love them.  They are solid oak, made in America, and I stained them myself after they arrived from the factory.  My kids call them "the Pilgrim chairs", possibly referring to the Pilgrims' penchant for denying themselves comfort.

When I finally decided to add new cushions I had to decide what fabric to use.  I wanted a heavier fabric, and didn't think I had enough on hand.  Good thing I checked!  I found this gingham in my basement.  It was heavier than quilting cotton, and there were 7 yards of it.  Then I remembered buying it at the museum sale several years ago.  For ONE DOLLAR!  Woo hoo, now I'm feeling thrifty for real!  The cushion covers are envelope style, so I can whisk them off and wash them whenever we have a spill.

Using up scraps always makes me feel thrifty.  This wonderful batch was dropped off yesterday by the Amazing Colleen.  The pieces are leftovers from guild stash, and will be used for more charity quilts.  Little Lizzy had to check them out first.

The new influx of scraps prompted me to do a better job organizing.  The larger scraps went into the bundles in the bushel basket, and the smaller pieces in these bags by color.  When each color is called for the RSC, I can pull out the bag and cut the blocks from these scraps.  We all know scraps show up whenever, so I can sort new ones by color and add them to the bags all year.  Maybe this will finally get the sewing room scraps under control?  We'll see.

Using fabric on hand and scraps, donated or purchased, does make me feel thrifty, but I also spend money on fabric and supplies without guilt.  Quiltmaking is good for my mental health, and that's worth it! 

Now I've got Feelin' Groovy in my head for the rest of the day.

Snicky got mail this week!  It's a postcard from the vet, reminding him about his appointment.  I showed it to him, but he didn't seem impressed.  It made me laugh, though.  Our vets' office is awesome.

I've got to get ready for my grandson Little Guy's birthday party today.  He's five years old!  It was a very happy day when he was born.  And all the days since!  Happy Birthday Little Guy!

I hope you have a lovely week, with lots of time for the things you love to do.

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Check out these great linky parties:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Cynthia at Oh Scrap