A Finish, A Fix, and Fall

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Here it is, my first Rainbow Scrap Challenge finish for this year, made of 42 crumb blocks.  In my head I've been calling it From the Cutting Room Floor.

I'm excited to have this finished because I have a deadline at the end of the month.  I'm donating this one to the GSAFE online auction.  GSAFE is an organization that supports LGBTQ kids in schools.  

If you've made crumb blocks, you probably know how much fun it is to fit all these little pieces together.  Lots of my scraps are novelty prints, so there are little pictures all through it of things like rockets and lions and dinosaurs and Piglet and Patrick Star from Spongebob.

Sometimes thing can look sort of strange, like the back end of a cat or a headless Pooh Bear.  (Sorry, Pooh!)

For the border, I chose a  border print designed by the late Laurel Burch called "Jungle Songs".  The designs were printed in strips across the fabric.  I bought it second hand and didn't have a very large piece of it, not enough to have all four borders the same.  So there are two different borders, one for the top and bottom and one for the sides.

The top and bottom borders have all these amazing animals.  I especially love the leopard.

The side borders are a colorful African mask print.  I've had this piece of fabric in my stash for a long time.  I'm really glad to find a good place for it.

It's not a big quilt, just 42 in. x 48 in.  It could be a child's cuddle quilt, or hung on a wall for a splash of color.

Here's the back, a neutral for one of October's RSC colors.  And a purple binding for last month!

And now for a correction.  Do you remember this quilt top?  I was making it from a kit cut by the amazing Nancy, Queen of Scraps from my quilt group.  

Above is the adorable frog fabric it's made from.  I thought I had finished it and posted it on Sept. 11.  But when I went to clean up I found the directions stating it was supposed to have 9 rows, and I only had 8.  I then found extra pieces, but I was one short of the large squares.  I looked all over, and didn't find it.  Nancy didn't have any more of the fabric.  The organization we are making this for asked for quilts to be 60 in. x 80 in., which it wouldn't be without the last row.  What to do?

In my collection of novelty prints, I only had one small piece of colorful frog fabric.  I made a 9 patch block with the orange print and pieced the new row.

Then I ripped and resewed to get the new square in the center.  Now it's a "design element", right?  Anyway, the top is the size we needed.  I'm not sure what happened to the missing square, but I have my suspicions.  Our young cat Lizzy has been carrying around the occasional sock or glove lately.  I may very well eventually find that square tucked in a corner or under something.  

Probably after our volunteers have quilted this top though.

One of our long-time quilt guild members passed away recently.  This week volunteers from our group sorted through her fabric etc. that her husband had bagged up for us.  Knowing I make lots of quilts for children, they set aside these fabrics for me.  Here they are, all washed and dried and ready to go.  I'll be thinking of Cheryl as I work with her stash.  RIP Cheryl.  Hope you're quilting in heaven.

We're having a lovely fall in Wisconsin this year.  I went to the orchard yesterday and bought a half bushel of Cortland apples, one of my favorites for crisps and pies.  I'm going to get started on canning them today.  I also bought some Honey Crisp apples, my husband's favorite, just for eating.

The trees are starting to turn, like this little maple.  Walks in the park are more colorful every day.

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

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

  

 

Radio Windmill Top and Lots of Purple

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Good morning!  I got back from vacation Sunday evening and hit the ground running, trying to catch up with laundry and groceries and just regular life.  I hadn't sewn anything for more than a week, so was glad to fit in some stitching with chores and babysitting.  

Our quilt guild has a current project making quilts for the group Sleep In Heavenly Peace.  The group makes beds for kids who don't have any, and quilt groups make quilts for the beds.  The size quilt they need is 60 in. x 80 in., which is larger than what I usually make.  I went looking in my "Some Assembly Required" bin (term borrowed from Cathy at the Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilting blog) and found a set of blocks I made in 2025 as part of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

The Radio Windmill block pattern was originally published in the 1940s in the Kansas City Star newspaper series of patterns.  I made mine from a pattern called Highland Fling in the book Dessert Roll Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott.  It's an easy pattern (no, really!).  The center is a charm square, and the outside triangles are cut from rectangles, so there is NO WASTED FABRIC.  

I chose mostly light background novelty print squares for the centers and calmer prints for the outside triangles.

It was simple and quick to sew 42 of the blocks together and add a border.  A volunteer from the guild will quilt it, someone (maybe me) will bind it, and it will go to a local child with their new bed.  I still have enough blocks left to make a small quilt.

Speaking of RSC blocks, it is already the last Saturday in September aka purple month, so here are my last group of purple blocks, the Quarter Log Cabin ones.

I never had yardage of these robots, just a few scraps, so I was glad to find a place for this square.  And of course I had to add the aliens flying space ships to this block. 

More ghosts eating popcorn!  This block is reminding me to get out the Halloween decorations this weekend.  Maybe I can get the grandsons to help decorate.

More purple!  I like to knit on vacation, especially in airports.  I took the yarn along to make hats for kids, to donate to a local charity.  I hadn't done this for awhile, and cast on too many stitches for the first hat.  I finished it into an adult-sized hat just before we went up into the mountains.  As you'd expect, it was COLD there in the mornings when we were out hiking.  I ended up wearing the big hat almost every day.  It's mine now lol.

Vacation Pix Coming!  (Feel free to skip.)

Our vacation this year was in the Canadian Rockies.  Above is the view from our hotel window.  I was jaw-droppingly amazed every time I looked out.

We ate lunch beside this beautiful lake one day.

This is a wildlife overpass in Banff National Park.  Critters like moose, elk, bears, etc. can safely cross the highway on these.  There are fences to keep them from getting on the road.

On one of our last days we went on a one-hour trail ride.  That's me in front and hubby right behind.  Neither of us are equestrians lol, not having been on horseback in at least 50 years.  It was a pleasant ride, and very exciting when we came across a male elk who didn't want to move.  Our guide used a noisemaker to encourage him to move on, also for a second male elk who came to see what was going on.  After a few minutes both elk disappeared into the brush and the ride continued.

Of course I went quilt shopping in town!  We stayed in Canmore, where there is a lovely quilt shop packed with fabrics and patterns and yarn.  I found most of my treasures in the sale room (as usual).  Check out the taco truck print!

As always, it's great to go on vacation, and great to come home.  I'm ready to enjoy fall now.  Bring on the baking, the sweaters, the oven suppers, the lovely fall leaves, and best of all, the quilting.

Happy Quilting, everyone, and have a good week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these amazing quilters:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

 

Frogs and Purple and Summer's End

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

There are frogs on the clothesline!  No, really!

Rainbow colored fabric frogs!  Aren't they awesome?  I love this print. These cute frogs are waving at us!

Happy blocks, made with small squares of the frog print and green borders, alternate with large squares of the frog fabric to make a cute quilt for a child.

The quilt top was designed and cut out by a friend I call Nancy Queen of Scraps.  She found the frog fabric at a sale, yards and yards of it, and bought it for a song.  Then she cut it into four quilt tops, made one herself, and gave out 3 more kits at our last guild meeting.  I got the green one.  It has been fun to stitch.

Are you having fun stitching purple scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month?  I definitely am!  Below are the last 3 blocks for my Dawn Chorus quilt.

Butterflies, swirls, birds, and (unfortunately?) a headless Tinkerbell.

More frogs!  Plus dots and flowers and gardening things.

Lastly, candy corn, stars, ghosts, and Parisian cats!

I got this fabric at the shop in Connecticut I mentioned last week.  Tres magnifique!  This cat even looks like my Snicky.

But wait, there's more!  I won't be blogging next week (out of town AGAIN), so I'm including another set of purple blocks for the RSC.

I have really enjoyed making these Whirligig blocks.  The only challenge I had was finding light prints to go with the dark ones each month.  Now I get to put them all together!

Labor Day signals the end of the summer for many of us.  I'm going through photos, looking back fondly at this busy summer.

My younger daughter took this picture of Buddy and Little Guy running out of the water when we were camping last August.  We could barely get them out of the water to eat!

This is my favorite photo of the summer, the family gathered together in our backyard.

I don't know if I'm ready for fall yet, especially since it still seems like summer.  I will have to get adjusted soon.

NO BLOG NEXT WEEK, sorry.  Hubby and I are taking a short vacation.  I promise to post photos.

Have a great week, everyone!  Happy Quilting!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Hurray for Purple and Two Quilt Shops

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

It's purple month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I couldn't be happier about it!  I started my RSC blocks with the Greek Cross (above) in lots of different shades of purple.

Have you noticed the purple Halloween fabrics?  When I was a kid Halloween colors were orange and black.  Next they added green, and now purple.  I really appreciate having more cute purple prints to choose from.  BTW, I like that the ghost above is reading a book of ghost stories.

The candy corn fabric here has a lighter purple background.  Fun stuff!

Here's more fun:  Minions dressed as vampires! I haven't used this one yet, but I know I'll find a good place for it.  I have a yard and a half so it might end up as a border on something.

I got the purple minions fabric at this shop, Quilted Ewe in New Hartford, Connecticut.  I was in Hartford mid-August for a family reunion.

The shop is in this converted building (old factory? warehouse?) and it is AWESOME.

They have thousands of bolts of fabric, lots of space, and helpful staff.  They're even open on Sunday.  Plus, there's a decent clearance rack, and that's where I found the purple minions!  I might have bought some more cat fabric there, plus a couple of light prints, etc.

I try to shop quilt stores when I travel.  Fabric is my favorite souvenir.

This year, I planned my RSC quilts before I started so I wouldn't end up with so many orphan blocks.  Now that the purples are done, I can figure out the layout and start setting them together.  There are 42 blocks, 5 of each plus an extra of red and orange. This is going to be fun!

But wait, more shopping!  As I have mentioned before, the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts started a resale shop on the museum grounds.  They call it Shop Our Stash, and it recently moved from a small outbuilding to the downstairs of the old farmhouse.  Of course I had to check it out.

Guess what I saw when I walked in the door--a whole laundry-size basket of CAT FABRIC!  There was a lot to choose from, and they were adding more while I stood there with my mouth hanging open.  It was hard to decide, but in the end I bought these six fat quarters and the 2 yard light print in the back.

Everything in the store is well organized, labeled, and priced.  All the merchandise is donated and most if not all of the staff are volunteers.  I was so impressed.  It seemed more like a quilt shop and less like a thrift store.

Even though I talk about my cats all the time, I love dogs too.  I've been thinking about making a dog quilt like the cat quilt I just finished, and these fat quarters were so cute so I scooped them up.  The fabric in the back is four yards long and will make a great quilt back. 

As you'd imagine for a resale shop, the prices are amazing!  They average $6 to $8 per yard, and even less for bundles and scraps.  I also bought some pink fabrics, a few more fat quarters, and a solid blue.

Resale shops in general are such a good idea.  They keep fabric out of the landfills, and into the hands of quilters or sewists for good prices.  The people who donate get rid of stuff they won't use, the buyers get a good deal, and the money in this case goes to support the quilt museum.  Win, win, win!

If you're going, you should know this:  their hours are very limited.  They are only open on Friday and Saturday, from 11:00 pm to 2:00 pm.  Definitely worth the trip!

No pictures of the boys this week, sorry!  Most days I only see them for a short time after school.  But they will be here tonight to sleep over, so I'd better start getting ready.

Have a lovely week, everyone!  And happy quilting!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap