Priorities

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Little Buddy helped us decorate for Halloween this week.  He would like us to have more dramatic displays, like the blow up clowns and pumpkins at his house, but we are much more laid back than that.  Decorations have just never been a big priority.

 

I finally get to display this little one block wonder that I made back in February, during the Rainbow Scrap Challenge orange month.  It started as a mistake, a block that just didn't work in a Block of the Month quilt.  So it got its own tiny quilt instead.

Pumpkins and black cats!

Oops!  Somebody forgot to feed this guy!

How are you doing on your RSC projects?  I can't wait to see all the link ups today.  Above are my last 3 blocks for the Text Me A Quilt project. 

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge has helped me use all colors of scraps, and I love that.  But what about all those strange scraps that don't really have a definite color?  It's really hard to know what to do with some of these fabrics, even though I really like them.

So I added a few of these multicolored weirdos into the Text Me A Quilt blocks.  It's already a bright quilt, so I think it will work out.  No scraps left behind!

I think I'm getting into the swing of full time babysitting the grandkids again.  It doesn't leave me a lot of time for sewing, but that's okay.  I have all the baby cuddles I could want, Little Buddy sings me songs (his current favorite is Roger Miller's King of the Road), and my high school Buddy actually talks to me about stuff sometimes.

My goal for this week was to put the double nine patch quilt top together.  I got it finished just this morning.  This is the one I've been making from a vintage UFO I bought at a flea market and took apart.  Last week's yellow blocks were the final ones, and I had decided on this set when I first started working on it.

My poor dog is feeling neglected.  She would not leave me alone when I was laying out the top on the floor.  (Sorry, Bella!  I will make some time just for you this weekend!)

It's a good sized quilt, 78 in. x 93 in., shown here on a queen sized bed.

All the fabrics I used in it are vintage, including the white squares, the cornerstones, and the green sashing and border.  I chose the green to give it a 1930s feel, since many of the fabrics in the blocks were from that era.  Green was so widely used in the 30s that it almost seems like a neutral. The border is narrower than I would have liked, but I didn't have enough of the green to go wider.

I could add another border, maybe a print, but it's already pretty big.  I'm planning some simple grid quilting, and already have a backing I think will work.

The quilting will have to wait a bit, until I get this job done.  I went to the local orchard on Thursday, and brought home Ida Red apples for sauce, Cortlands for pie/crisp slices, and Honey Crisps for eating.  All of those were seconds, which is like the clearance rack for apples.  It just means they have an irregular or small shape, or maybe a blemish, which doesn't matter at all.  The pears were regular price, and since they're nice and firm I'll can them last.

If you do any canning, you'll know how hard it is to get jar lids this year, and how expensive they've become if you manage to find them.  I'm prioritizing this good fruit from the orchard with my time and supplies.

This difficult year has made a lot of us adjust our priorities, and has shown us what is really important.  Many things we took for granted are cancelled or unsafe.   The list of activities I miss just gets longer all the time.  But, I truly believe it will not be this way forever.  We can handle hardships.  Our long-ago ancestors' daily lives had far more hardship than most of us have ever seen.

Hang in there.  We're going to get through this.  Stay safe, and keep sewing!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Angela at So Scrappy

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop 

Cynthia at Oh Scrap