Fits and Starts, But Mostly Starts

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

New year, new quilt projects!  Here's a fun new project for this year.  I'm using dark and bright blue on these blocks, since that's the color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, my favorite internet challenge of all time.

I stole this idea from a lovely quilt blogger, and I can't even remember who!  The blue pieces are cut 3.5 in. x 6.5 in. and of course I cut them from some of my favorite novelty fabrics.  (Will I ever use up all that dinosaur fabric?  It's probably going to take a few more years.)  The white pieces are cut 2 in. x 6.5 in.

Update:  The pattern for this quilt comes from Maryquilts.com, and is called Forest Bricks.  You can find a link to the free pdf on this page (Click HERE).  Thanks to alert reader Connie in VA for the info.  I saw it on Sara's blog My Sewing Room.  You can see hers HERE.  Her quilt is named Scrappy Bricks.

My plan here is to make at least two toddler-sized quilts for donation, while using up some of the apparently endless supply of 3.5 in. strips in the drawer.

Speaking of endless supplies, the local chain store is having a big flannel sale, so I looked through my flannel bins in the basement.  Holy overstock, Batman!  Something must be done!  First, I'm staying away from the sale.  Second, I put three kits together for cozy baby quilts.

This one was easy--the strips were already cut.  I grabbed the purple and pink strips, plus light strips that would go with them.  This will be a rail fence quilt for a little girl.  There are a lot of strips, it could make two quilts, we'll see.  Most of these are leftovers from a big quilt I made for my granddaughter.

The first die I got for my Accuquilt cutter was this large tumbler.  I went nuts with it, cutting up all kinds of fabric, but especially flannel, and made several quilts.  Most of these tumblers were already cut, just needed a few more solid yellows.  I think the aqua will make either a border or a binding.

More duckies!  I cut a Trip Around the World baby quilt kit from 5 in. strips and remnants.  These are easy to cut and piece, but it always takes me forever to decide which fabric goes where.  It's especially tough if I only have a small amount of a print.

Since when did phone books start giving life advice?  I'm working on a string quilt (more on that next week) and using phone book pages as paper foundations.  It was fun to find this encouragement for having a hobby.  Quilting definitely helps with stress and gives great opportunities for social interaction.  Not sure about the exercise bit, though.

This page had Reasons to get a Pet.  I can get on board with pets being good companions, etc., but I'm not sure if our kitten relieves more stress than he causes.

Here is Snicklefritz, attacking my Rainbow Streak of Lightning quilt.  In spite of this little wild guy, I got the center quilted, just need to quilt the borders and bind it.

 There was a mystery in the sewing room this week.  My reliable treadle was suddenly having terrible tension problems.  It would be working fine, I would step away to press or cut, and when I started sewing again the tension would be messed up.  As always, I went through my checklist for tension problems, including rethreading the machine.  When I did that, it went back to normal.  Have you guessed what it was?  That little cat was playing with the thread and partially unthreading the machine!  It wasn't obvious, so I didn't notice. Finally I caught him in the act.  I sent him off to play with hubby for a while.

Oh, no, somebody's in the tunnel!  My little grandson and I play with his beloved trains every morning. Sometimes we use this old book as a tunnel for the trains to go through.  But not when there's a giant cat in the way!

Seriously, it may not be relaxing having a kitten around, but it is a lot of fun.

I hope you have fun this week, doing whatever you love to do.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Cynthia at Oh Scrap