I Heart Aqua Prints, Crumbs, and Old Projects

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

How are your aqua blocks coming along?

What with one thing and another I did not get much done in the sewing room this week except for a few blocks.  These hearts are aqua for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month.

I was a little surprised at how many aqua scraps I had, especially in novelty prints.  (The top right heart is a dinosaur bones print.  How often do you see something like that?)

I have had some of these scraps for literally years, like the cat print on the bottom right.  Someday I will use the last scrap of it, and I'll be sad.

Favorite block:  Winnie the Pooh and Tigger too.  I still have a lot of this fabric, mostly in smaller pieces.  It will probably turn up in aqua blocks for the RSC for years to come.

Does this ever happen to you?  Sometimes I'll be working on a project and find I've used up all the pieces for the leaders and enders project I'm doing at the same time.  Then I'll be hunting around in the sewing room for something else to use as leaders and enders, and accidentally (!) start a new project.  

That's what these crumb blocks are.  I have a small bin on my cutting table for "crumbs", those small bits that can't be cut into any of the pieces I save.  For me, that means anything smaller than a 2 in. square.  

When the little bin gets full, I sort the pieces by color, and store them in a small bag inside a larger bag of strings the same color.  (The aqua crumbs are getting out of hand!)  I start the crumb blocks with the little pieces, and finish them with strings from the bag.  I only got three made this week, but they were fun to do.  Plus they used up small scraps and strings!  This will be a long term project, with no pressure to finish soon.

I still have lots of block sets I made for last year's RSC, like these 3-D flying geese.  (Click HERE for the post with a tutorial.)  It was still in the block bin because I couldn't decide what I was doing with them. 

I ended up going back to my original idea and putting them together like this.  It's aqua month, so I did aqua blocks first of course.  Maybe I'll get a couple of 2024 quilts done before we start putting together the 2025 RSC blocks.

It's been hot here this week, 92F yesterday, so we've done some inside things, like crafts.  Buddy had fun making these Minecraft and Super Mario items from Perler beads.  They're assembled on a hard plastic base and melted with an iron.

My hubby made this one.  Do you think he might have been influenced by living with a quilter?

Whatever the weather at your house, I hope you are having a good week, with time to do the things you love.  Like quilting!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

  

August is Aqua

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Well, look what "grew" in my garden this week!  It's a little nine patch quilt, ready to be donated.

Most of the 2.5 in. (unfinished) squares came from a bag I picked up on the free table at our quilt guild.  There were lots of solid and print squares, so it made sense to combine them.  I call this one Nine Patch A and B, because there are two kinds of blocks.  Block A has 5 solid squares and 4 print squares, and Block B has 5 print squares and 4 solids.

The border is a Sesame Street print.  This is what was left after I used it on a previous quilt.  Big Bird, Elmo, Cookie Monster, and Zoe are skating and jumping rope etc., having a good time outside.

The binding is made from a scrap!  I had to piece seven strips together for a quilt 36 in. x 42 in., but it was worth it to use up the scrap and get this color.  From now on I'm calling this shade Elmo Red.  The back came from the big sale at the museum.

The quilting is my usual serpentine stitch in a two inch grid.  Mrs. Pfaff and I are on a roll finishing up some small tops.

August is aqua!  It's the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month.  My aquas seem to divide into greenish ones and blueish ones, so I made blocks of each.  Above are the greenish aqua Bright Hopes blocks, 6 in. finished.

These are the blueish Bright Hopes.  Lots of fish, bugs, frogs, and even Hello Kitty.

There were some fun fabrics to piece into big bowties, too, like dinosaurs and Scooby Doo.

More fish here, even Baby Shark (sorry if that brings up an earworm for you like it does for me!).

It was just like potato chips, I couldn't stop making Bow Ties.  Some of these were not strictly aqua, but it won't matter when they're put into quilts.

Favorite block of the week:

I had never seen this fabric before.  I just love that frog with a banjo.  You never know what fun prints you're going to find when you collect scraps!

My little rascals went to Vacation Bible School this week.  They're posing in a pretend magnifying glass.

After VBS on Thursday we went to a park with lots of structures to climb on.  Buddy is getting ready to launch himself onto some monkey bars.

Little Guy got into the act, too.  It was good for them to get out and get some exercise, after being stuck indoors due to the rain on Wednesday.

I'm glad to have made some inroads on the UFOs and RSC blocks this week, since I don't know how much I will be able to do next week.  I have unfortunately acquired a summer cold.  I rate it 0/10, would not recommend.  Avoid it if you can!

Have a lovely week!  I hope it's filled with all the things you love to do.  Including quilting!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Lions and Tigers and Bears and Purple

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

It's a rainy day, so no outside photos, sorry.

At last, a finished quilt!  By some miracle, I got a little extra time this week.  Mrs. Pfaff and I made short work of this little 40 in. x 48 in. Happy Blocks quilt.

I showed the top on the blog back in March.  It was waiting for quilting when Mrs. Pfaff had to go into the shop.  In my head I'm calling it Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My.

The pieces in the center of the Happy Blocks are animal prints cut from panels and striped fabrics, and bordered by solid colored scraps.  The squares were cut at 4.5 in., and the outside strips at 2.5 in. wide, making blocks that finished at 8 in. square.  

I'm donating this quilt to the Children's Advocacy Center in Milwaukee.  In my experience, most kids love animals, so I hope an animal quilt can brighten a child's day.

Wait, we've got a moose, a skunk, an elephant, birds, butterflies, etc., but where are the lions?

Here they are, on the back!  Along with zebras, giraffes, more elephants, turtles, and even more tigers!

I bought this fabric at a second hand sale, and it fit perfectly for the back.  The copyright on the selvedge is 1998.  Older cotton fabrics (in good condition!) can be great for backing, since they are usually 2 to 3 inches wider than today's fabric.

It's hard to believe this is the last Saturday in July.  The summer is speeding past!  I had to push hard to get my purple blocks done for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, since I know I won't have much time next week.

Sisters Choice is first, just five blocks, but with lots of purple scraps.

Next are the heart blocks.  I was surprised I had so many different shades of purple in the scraps.

There are TWO ghost print blocks.  The one on the upper left came from the box my friend gave me two weeks ago.  I'm already working on those scraps, Joey!  I just need to sew faster!

My favorite block this week is one of those prints that looks purple with blue fabrics and blue with purple.  I call them chameleons.  It's a cat print, I think it's by the late Laurel Burch.  It won't matter what color it reads when it ends up in a scrap quilt.

I did get the peaches canned last Saturday.  We also had peach crisp and some for eating.  I already had peach jam from last year, so I didn't bother with it.

Yesterday we met our oldest daughter and her kids at a lake.  The boys would hardly get out of the water, even for lunch!

Buddy was looking for fish.  There were some very tiny ones.  He was too busy to pose.

All of us are well here, and I hope you are the same.  Have a lovely week!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Little Brick Ladders, Radio Windmills, and More Scraps

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Not a great week for stitching around here, but I did get this little top sewn.  I'm glad I took the pictures yesterday when it was sunny since we're having a light rain this morning, but the wind was too wild for clothesline photos yesterday so I laid it on the grass.

There are lots of different reasons for starting a new donation quilt.  Sometimes I want to try an exciting new pattern, or use a specific fabric.  This time I needed a leader/ender project, and wanted to relieve the overcrowding in this box of rectangles that I call Little Bricks.  My little bricks measure 2.5 in. x 3.5 in., and are cut from scraps.  (BTW, this photo shows the box AFTER I made the quilt!  More Little Bricks quilts are in my future.)

I call this block Little Brick Ladder.  The pattern I'm using here is a variation on others I've seen in books and online.  It's similar to a rail fence.  Each block has 3 of the little bricks plus two rectangles on the sides cut from a light fabric.  The side pieces measure 2 in. x 6.5 in. cut.  The blocks themselves are 6 in. finished.

I have LOTS of one-way-design prints in my scraps.  It's really common in the novelty prints I love.  For this quilt, I made nearly half of the blocks orienting the prints horizontally, and nearly the other half orienting them vertically, with a few of the blocks using only prints that could look well either way.  The light jelly bean print came from the museum sale last month.  (There were 5 whole yards of it, so you can expect to see it in my quilts again!)

The border is this aqua Dr. Seuss print.  I'm trying to get out of my rut of dark blue borders on everything, so I was glad I had enough of this fabric left.

I will be quilting this top myself.   Piecing is easy to do when life is busy, but quilting the tops takes more time.  I am really hoping I can get something done this weekend.

Purple piecing is fun!  Purple is my favorite color, and it's the July color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I had a nice little bundle of scraps for the big triangles on these Radio Windmill blocks, but it was harder to find light charm squares with purple in them for the centers.  I actually used one fabric twice.  Can you guess which one?

Yes, you're right, it was the pickle ball print!  I actually bought that fat quarter in a quilt shop!

But this block was my favorite this week.  The outside triangles are one of my very favorite Kaffe Fassett prints.  The merry go round horses print was from a scrap I found in the basement clean out and immediately reclaimed.

Look at all this!!!  A friend gave me a wonderful gift this week (Thank you so much, Joey!)  We exchanged boxes at the museum meeting last Saturday.  I gave her some vintage block sets etc. from the basement cleanout, and she gave me a box loaded with wonderful prints for the kid quilts (above).

But wait, there's even more!  I made a scrap rainbow with the smaller pieces just to show them off.

Still more!  Light scraps on the left, big scraps on the right!  

Plus a giant bag of strings!  I'm still going through them.  These are bright ones I've sorted out.  There might be some purple in there!  Thanks again, Joey!  I can hardly wait to start sewing these up!

Even though we had cloudy skies this week, we still got outside.  Buddy was challenging himself on the Monkey Bars ...

and Little Guy was following along as always.  They're wearing their 4th of July shirts just because they like them.

Our shy kitten Lizzy is still getting used to the boys being here every day, and she's very interested in what they are doing.  While they were playing, she ran into the room and stole a little plastic chicken, taking it to her lair in the basement.  The boys laughed and said she could keep it.  After the kids left on Wednesday, she checked out the rest of their toys and curled up in the corral.

We are having a good summer here.  The summer produce has been lovely, with black raspberries now stacked in the freezer and peaches waiting for me to peel and can them.  I hope I can get more sewing done this week, but if not it's okay, it will wait for me.

Have a lovely week, whatever the weather brings.

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Angela at So Scrappy