Yellow and Blue

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Happy first Saturday in March!

Spring is coming, even here in Wisconsin.  The snow is only in spots at the moment, melting a little in the daytime and refreezing at night, but it's still pretty drab outside.  My new baby quilt finish is providing most of the color in this photo.

It's Hands 2 Help time!  For the last few years, I have participated in this charity quilt drive from March through May.  Sarah of Confessions of a Fabric Addict has been our fearless leader, but due to health concerns her place will be filled this year by Mari of The Academic Quilter (Click HERE to get all the details.)

This little quilt will go to Little Lambs, which provides quilts for kids going into foster care.

The big squares of cat fabric came from my ever-expanding stash of novelty prints.  The 4 patch blocks came from our quilt guild's silent auction last November. 

I hit the jackpot at that auction!  You can see the 4 patch blocks in the foreground of this photo of the amazing loot I brought home.  The blocks were leftovers from a quilt made by one of our guild members.

I had some yellow polka dot in the stash, and we all know polka dots go with everything, so that became the inner border.  The binding is a Laurel Birch print.

Here's the backing--unraveling balls of yarn.  Which sort of goes with the cat theme, right?

So that's one done for H2H 2022.

When I made this top a few weeks ago, I had no idea what the Ukrainian flag looked like.  Now I see blue and yellow everywhere.  It is encouraging to see nearly the whole world united in opposition to the Russian invasion and this terrible war.  I wish I could send quilts (and anything else that would help!) to the people in Ukraine and/or the refugees in neighboring countries, but instead I am sending money to Doctors Without Borders, since I know they will use it well.  A friend where I used to work volunteered with them every year.  Click HERE to see an article about their work in the area.

Yellow is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for March.  I'm glad we have such a bright color this month, we really need it.  I got started on some of my easy blocks, the split nine patches.

These blocks are being made from a box of squares and half square triangles left over from other quilts.

 Somehow, even with the best of intentions, that box of scraps never seems to get emptied.

 I may have figured out why.  I used as many of the squares and hsts as I could, but I did have to cut a few more just so I'd have enough variety.  

But of course I didn't know exactly how many more I would need, so I cut extra.  Now there are MORE leftovers in the box.  At least there are not as many as I started with.

Some of the light pieces for these blocks came from this basket of scraps.  Some of these scraps started out as backing for baby quilts, and some were left over from quilts made by friends.

I pulled out everything I thought might make a 3.5 in. strip, square, or half square triangle.

Then I pressed the whole mess, straightened them up, and started cutting.

There's a nice stack of 3.5 in. strips on the right, and a few 2.5 and 2 in. strips as well.  Wonder how long these will last?  It will be fun to use them up for this year's RSC quilts.

This week in Baby Buddy news:

When I used up my giant roll of batting, I saved the cardboard tube.  Baby Buddy is having fun launching little cars down it.

If they go far, he throws up his hands and cheers!  I'm cheering today, too, because he just turned two!  Not exactly a baby anymore, so he gets a new nickname.  Happy Birthday, Little Guy.

Have a good week, everyone.  And God bless the Ukrainians.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Check out these wonderful linky parties!  These ladies go out of their way to give us a place to show and share our quilts.

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap