Q is for Quilt

 Welcome to Treadlestitches! 

And welcome to November!  I guess it really is fall now, although the grass is still green under the fallen leaves.

A lovely lady in my quilt group gave me an alphabet panel to make into a charity quilt.  I paired it with the red bears print , a second-hand find.  

It's a good thing there were two full alphabets on the panel, because it was very difficult to cut the letters apart and leave enough seam allowance.  Some of the letters were too close to the edge, or too close to other letters.  In the end I only had to fix one the letter, the Y, by adding a strip of white fabric cut from the panel.

T is for turtle, U is for Umbrella, and of course Q is for Quilt!  I did some simple outline quilting on the squares, and parallel lines in the borders.  The binding is the same fabric as the inner border.

Check out the back!  A few weeks ago Hubby and I went antiquing, and I found this print.  There are crayons, hearts, balloons, and, best of all, alphabets.  I hope a little child enjoys this quilt as much as I loved making it.

Did you have a good Halloween?  Our little grandsons definitely did.  Buddy is dressed as his favorite video game character, Link from Legend of Zelda.  Little Guy went as Pikachu, his favorite Pokemon.  After trick or treating, Buddy says he has enough candy now for a year.  

 Last year I made lots of these little houses for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  They're the simplest thing ever, just a 5 in. square with one seam across the top to make a point.  To me, they look like the kind of houses young children draw.  I made one quilt, but had lots of the houses left over.  (Click HERE for more info, my first post about them last January.) 

 By coincidence, I bought this glue stick when visiting with my friend Joey (hi, Joey!  We had such a fun day!) It's made by the same people that make a basting spray I use often.  The glue stick turned out to be just the thing I needed.  I'm using it to stick the little houses to a background 5 in. square so I can topstitch them down.  Works like a charm.

Next I'm adding solid strips all around to make a block I'm calling Happy Houses.  Of course I picked out the Halloween ones to do first!  Ghosts ...

and scary costumes.  The blocks finish at 7.5 in.  

It's been a happy busy beginning of fall.  Last Saturday we went on a short hike with our eldest daughter, her hubby, and our grandkids Mr. H and Miss E.  It was beautiful weather, just a little crisp with lots of sunshine.  (That's me in the back, where I like to be!  Mr. H just refuses to be in photos, so he took the picture.)

From the trail we could see this church, the Basilica and National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians, high on the hill above us.  Another wonderful day.

I hope you have wonderful days too, this week and every week.  Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Potato Chip Quilts: Can't Make Just One

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  

I'm back from a quilt retreat, and working on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks again. 

Two little quilts today!  These are made from the potato chip blocks I've been piecing since January,  4 each month, in 10 colors.  The blocks are 9 in. finished, and the quilts themselves measure 36 in. x 45 in.  

It was hard to decide how to divide the blocks into two quilts.  I didn't want them to be just alike.  Eventually I did it like this:  Quilt A has the brighter colored blocks (red, orange, yellow, green, dark/medium blue) plus black. 

Snicky the cat graciously "helped" me take pictures.

 The blocks are set side by side.  No borders, just binding and simple quilting.

I had so much fun making these blocks!  There are lots of cute fabrics in them.

Here's the back, a print I got second hand.  The character on it is named Noddy, and apparently comes from a British TV show for kids.  The binding is another find, probably from the 1990s.

I made Quilt B from the more pastel blocks (yellow, aqua, light blue, purple) plus the multicolored ones.  Same set, same quilting.  (I'm really in a quilting rut lol.  But this way gets the job done!)

The binding is a little wider than usual.  It came from a scrap bag I won at our guild's silent auction, and was already made.

More scraps from the auction!  Lots of these are really cute.

Like these very realistic pigs.  For one short season, we had feeder pigs on the family "farm" when I was a teenager.  Beware of the red ones, they are the meanest.

Fall has been beautiful here, with higher than normal temps, but it's cooling off now and letting us know winter is really coming.

We are still enjoying the local apples, fresh and in home canned applesauce.  Buddy asked me to take this picture of him with an apple slice.

I am still dazzled by last weekend's Quilt History retreat.  The presenter was amazing, we got to touch EVERYTHING (some quilts and textiles nearly 200 years old!), and all of us brought quilts from our collections to share and learn from.  I think it deserves its own post, which I may do in the next week or two.

One more thing I did this week:

As the sticker says, I voted!  We have early voting in Wisconsin.  Hubby and I cast our ballots on Tuesday.  There was quite a line, but it didn't take too long.  I was glad to see so many people coming out.  There's a message on the sticker for those who haven't voted yet.  The cow says, "Get a moove on!"

Thanks for reading, and have a great week!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Rainbow Kitties, Scraps, and Fall Fun

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by.

Isn't it fun putting our Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks together at last?  All year long I have loved making these cat blocks, and now they get to be a rainbow.

The border is this cat print.  More rainbow kitties!  The quilting is my usual squiggle in a 3 in. grid.

I set the cats in an odd staggered set.  It's fun to do something a little different.

Here's the back, a rainbow of hearts in flannel.  It should be warm and cozy this winter for a little child.  Hope it goes to someone who loves cats!

It seems odd not to be making more RSC blocks, but we'll start again in January, and in the meantime I can catch up on some other projects.  This quilt top was a quilt group challenge issued back in June (I think).  The Amazing Margaret designed this quilt, gave us a very professional-looking written pattern with multiple sizes, and asked us to use up some of the guild's large supply of brown fabric.  We could add our own fabrics also.  

Finished tops were due at the August guild meeting, where the members would choose the top 3 for "fabulous prizes".  I didn't attend that meeting due to a mild illness, and almost forgot about these pieces I had cut and set aside.  It didn't take long to finish once I pulled it out.  

The pattern is great, just squares in 3 sizes, pieced in 8 small sections.  It was a good chance to use up some leaf prints etc. I had on hand, and I love fall colors.  The top will be quilted by our wonderful long arm quilters and donated to a local charity.

Speaking of the quilt guild, look what happened to me yesterday!  A large stock of scrap fabric was donated to the guild, and the charity committee asked if I'd take on the kid/novelty prints.  Of course I said yes!  There is some very cute stuff in this pile.

Here's what it looked like after being washed.  The pile on the left are pieces cut off the bigger scraps, because ...

...many of the pieces had been used to fussy cut squares and/or rectangles.  I cut off the dangling pieces so they would go through the wash better, and now I have a lovely scrap pile to trim up.  These will be fun pieces for new quilts to donate.

We had lots of fall fun yesterday with our youngest grandsons.  There was no school, so we got to have them all day.

They posed with Grandpa at the apple orchard.  Little guy is extra excited.

They loved the corn maze.  Buddy was confident we'd find the way out, but Little Guy wasn't so sure.

We bought four different kinds of apples, and had a taste test after we got home.  Buddy liked Macintosh best, Hubby loves Fuji and Honey Crisp, and Little Guy liked all except the Fuji.  I love them ALL.

After lunch, we made and decorated Halloween cookies.  Some of the decorations may have been eaten along the way.

This is Little Guy's artwork.  Did you guess the cookie is an apple shape, underneath all the icing and sprinkles?

This ghost is Buddy's masterpiece.  She is apparently Hawaiian, as he said she was wearing a "flower necklace" (lei?).  He also made a Pumpkin Ninja, but I was too late to get a photo.  We sent them home with lots of cookies for their parents.

I hope you have lots of fun this week, quilty and otherwise, no matter what season it is where you live!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Check our these wonderful quilt blogs, run by generous and kind quilters, who let us all link up with them!

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