Two Tops and Three Blocks

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Hello, fellow quilters!  How was your week?  Mine was a bit crazy.  I'm reorganizing all my quilt stuff and IT'S A LOT!  The top above was in the Quilt Tops in Pieces bin.  Instead of sighing and putting it away (AGAIN) I spent about an hour sewing the final five seams.  Progress!

The pattern is called Beachside Bungalow, and is from the book Scrap Basket Beauties by Kim Brackett.  It's been in the UFO pile for at least 10 years.

Here's the quilt from the book.  I made my background pieces light instead of dark.  Most of the scraps in the quilt came from a bag of batik scraps I bought at a quilt show.

The sewing was easy, but on-point settings sometimes make me feel off-kilter.  I'm so glad I finished the top even if it did take years.  My version is the same size as the one in the book:  57 in. x 68 in. It will be quilted by a volunteer, and donated to the Children's Advocacy Center in Milwaukee.

But Wait, There's More!

The pieces for this top were in the same bin as the one above.  This is my Jane Austen quilt.  Back in 2014, quilt historian Barbara Brackman ran a block of the week called Austen Family Album on her blog.  Every week for 39 weeks she featured a 12 in. block to make, and told us more about Ms. Austen's life with family and friends.

I got to use my collection of early 1800s reproduction fabrics to make the blocks.  It was great fun opening the blog on Sunday mornings to read the article and start on the new block.  I wrote about it on Treadlestitches in May of 2014 when I made the first five blocks.  (Click HERE to view that post.)

Good news!  The Austen Family Album posts are still up!  All you have to do is click HERE for the first block post.  To get to the other posts:  Scroll all the way to the bottom of the first post (it's a long post) until you see the Blog Archive list on the left.  Starting with April, click on each month to find the blocks. 

I had originally planned to machine quilt this top myself. (What was I thinking?  Far beyond my talents!)  I was doing a lot of quilt as you go then, and had assembled the blocks in three sections, including the borders.  When I pulled it out of the bin this week I realized it only needed two seams to become a complete top.  So I sat right down in the messy room and sewed them!

While it's bigger than I usually make anymore, it's really just a twin size at 75 in. x 90 in.  One of the wonderful long-arm volunteers will quilt it, and it will be donated locally.

Whew!  Two UFOs off my list!

I am loving all the orange blocks on Angela's blog!  So many people are finding such cute orange prints.

This week my orange blocks are the Dawn Chorus pattern from Pam and Nicky Lintott.  I only make 3 of them, so I'm showing them all.  This one has a Kaffe scrap and some funky happy flowers.

Halloween cat print in this one, plus dog bones.

And lastly, bats, eyeballs, and batik.

In Progress

The center of the little Friendship Star quilt is sewn, but the borders still need to be attached before I can quilt it.  Maybe I'll have more time this week to work on it.

Look, it's Benjamin Franklin!  He's being portrayed here by Buddy.  He and his classmates learned all about someone in history, created a display board will facts and illustrations, and gave a speech to the class.  Yesterday the school gym was set up as a "wax museum", and the students told us about "themselves".  

Adults were welcome to come, so my daughter (Buddy's mom) and I went.  Buddy did a great job.  I also enjoyed learning some new facts about people like Milton Hershey, Amelia Earhart, Rachel Carson, and Isaac Newton.  Although the student portraying Isaac Newton thought perhaps Newton's father died in a car wreck.  In 1642.

Today is a special day for Hubby and me.  Fifty years ago today, on May 15, 1972, we were married.  He is everything I ever wanted in a husband, and we are so lucky to still be here together.  (OMG we are so impossibly young in this photo!)

The weather is beautiful today, sunny and 70s, my favorite.  I hope it's nice where you live, too.  Have a lovely week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

More Bright Hopes, Orange, Quilt History, and Art

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

May is such a busy month!  I didn't have much time for sewing this week, but I mananged to drag this little quilt over the "finished" line last evening.  It's a donation for the Children's Advocacy Center in Milwaukee.

The pattern is an old standby from the Quilts for Kids website.  (Click HERE for the link.)  Instead of 4 patches I used some of the leftover blocks from last year's Bright Hopes stack, made for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I think I can get one more quilt from them.

The unpieced blocks are a cute print that looks like children's drawings.  I bought this from Hancock Fabrics online on a whim.  I always justify buys like this to myself with these four words:  It Was On Sale.  Which it was!

I don't usually add a narrow inner border, but this quilt really needed it since the border and the alternate block are the same fabric.

The back is this cute print, which is also meant to look like children's drawings.  I bought it second hand and have had it forever.  It was good to find a home for it.

A two inch grid in serpentine stitch was quickly quilted, and the binding is the same fabric as the inner border.  It's a small quilt, just 38 in. x 44 in., which should work well for a baby or toddler.

The orange blocks are really standing out to me this month.  Isn't it a great color?

It was fun sewing the orange Half Log Cabin blocks.  I only had to make 4, because the one on the bottom right was one of the blocks I made to try out the pattern.

Orange novelty prints can be hard to find, but thank goodness for Halloween fabrics!  Even the Cat in the Hat print was meant for Halloween.

Check out the bats!

And of course these black cats!  I bought this print in Kentucky last fall.

In Progress

Oops, I forgot to show my work In Progress last week!  I was in too big a hurry to go to the WQSG meeting (more on that below).  I'm working on some leftover half square triangles that were in the back of the 2.5 in. square drawer.  I'm sewing them into 6 in. finished Friendship Stars to make another quilt like the one I just finished.  The orange ones are done!

The Wisconsin Quilt Study Group meeting last weekend was wonderful!  We met at the Lincoln-Tallman House in Janesville, Wisconsin, and the staff pulled out lots of quilts for us to enjoy.  I think this one was in the servants' quarters.  (Yay, orange!)

They even did a bed turning for us featuring some of their oldest quilts.  This one was wonderfully scrappy.  The colors were still vibrant.  Very little information was available on the date, but definitely before 1900.

As part of our meeting, we shared some of our family quilts.  I had to snap a photo of this one that belonged to Carol.  I have often admired this scrappy pattern.  Plus, more orange!

The museum staff was amazing, our tour guide was knowledgeable, fun, and patient, and the house is beautifully preserved.  We even got to see where Abraham Lincoln slept!  It was a lovely quilty day out.

Yesterday DH and I had another great day.  It was Grandparents Day at Buddy and Little Guy's school.  We saw their classrooms, played bingo, went to the bookfair, and viewed the art show.  Above Buddy is showing us his painting of sunflowers.

Little Guy is pointing to his project, a smiling snail with a colorful shell.

Little Guy was just happy to make something and have it displayed, but Buddy was disappointed not to get a ribbon for his project. I hope I can help them focus more on the satisfaction of creating and sharing art and less on competition.  Art (in whatever medium we like!) can give us joy all through our lives.

I hope you have a joyful week, with time to do what you love.  Like quilting!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Thrifty Top and Orange Whirly-gigs

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge is the gift that keeps on giving, isn't it?  This quilt top is made from blocks I made last year as part of the RSC.  The block pattern is called Thrifty, and is #1602 in Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.

It's kind of a long quilt (especially for me!), so I had to fold it over for the clothesline photo.  Here on the floor you can see all 20 blocks.

I tried something new with the sashing.  The blocks are 9 in. finished, and each division in the block is 3 in.  For the sashing, I used 3 in. finished squares in bright colors.  I chose squares that were more monotone in color than my usual novelty prints.  There's no rhyme or reason to the color placement of the sashing strips.  I just put them where I thought they looked good.

The border is this blue printed plaid.  I've been steering away from plaids as borders, thinking I would have to match the plaid if piecing the border strips.  That can be hard to do with a printed plaid.  Then I noticed commercial items like shirts etc. don't always match the plaids, and I gave myself permission to relax about it.

It was fun revisiting these blocks when putting the top together.  It will go to the Children's Advocacy Center in Milwaukee after being quilted by a volunteer.

Speaking of the CAC, all these quilts and tops got dropped off this week.  The drop off point is about 30 minutes from my house (more like 45 min. now due to construction) so I only go about every other month.  These quilts and tops are the ones that have been shown on the blog since the last drop off in February.  

This load was 8 small quilts, 1 twin-sized quilt (the princess one), 5 lap/twin tops, and two small flannel quilts. The flannel quilts were made by Terrific Tammy and Awesome Joy from my wonderful quilt guild.

It's orange month at the RSC, hurray!  I love patterns like this that seem like magic.  The block starts with 2 sets of 2 matching charm squares, and ends up like this.  (Click HERE for the tutorial from Sew Preeti.)  

When I decided what to make for my RSC blocks this year, I went through my orphan blocks and found some whirly-gig blocks I had made to test the pattern.  They needed to be made into a quilt.  Four of these orange ones were in the bag, so I only had to add 2 more.

These are the two new ones.  Check out that Star Wars fabric!

Trees are bursting into blossom now, like this little apple tree in the park.  My walks are much more colorful.

It's been rainy the last few days, so we've been doing inside things like puzzles and games and reading.  My youngest daughter and her son Little Guy were curled up on the couch reading his favorite Pokemon book.

I'm in a rush today, I'm going to a meeting of the Wisconsin Quilt Study Group about 2 hours away.  Should be lots of fun and lots of wonderful quilts antique quilts to see.

Have a good week, everyone!  And thanks for reading this.

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these great linky party hostesses:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

The Last Pink Quilt for April

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Here's my last pink quilt for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month of April.  It was fun to scrounge around in my scraps to find 5 in. squares for the centers and 2 in. (cut) strips for the outsides of these Happy Blocks.  You could say it made me happy!

Some of these scraps have been waiting a long time for their chance to shine.  For example, check out Betty Boop playing the guitar.  I don't even remember where that fabric came from.

One of the squares came from scraps left from the Princess quilt I showed last week.  It's the fabric that keeps on giving.

I ran out of good bright pink for borders a couple of weeks ago, but I had a half yard of this wild floral.  The binding is the last of a pink polka dot.

Our guild's Stash Coordinator, the lovely Joy, brought this light floral piece to our last meeting, and I snapped it up for the back of this quilt.  There are only two small strips left of it, which are now filed in the parts department.

I'm happy to donate this little quilt to the Children's Advocacy Center for a child to keep.

So, what's In Progress this week?

 

I'm sewing 20 of last year's RSC Thrifty blocks together with sashing pieced from 3 in. finished squares.  It's a new idea for me, I'm liking it so far.

Also, orange scraps need to be tamed into blocks for the RSC May color of the month.  I love orange, so I'm psyched!

What's the weather like where you live?  Here, we are moving into spring, going back and forth from 40 degrees F to 80F and back.  At least, we haven't had any tornado warnings this week.  The dandelions are springing up all over the park.

I've put out some small quilts with spring colors.  I've shown these before.  Both of them were projects started and abandoned by unknown quilters that I enjoyed finishing.

Snicky and Lizzy are so excited when we open the windows.  Bird watching is their favorite thing.  Don't worry, the window screens keep them inside and the birds safe.

I hope you are keeping safe too, inside or outside!  Have a lovely week, and happy quilting!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these wonderful hostesses:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap