Crossroads, Happy Blocks, and A Smooth Criminal

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

 

The Crossroads quilt I started a few weeks ago is a finish!  I had a little trouble getting the blocks to come out "exactly" right, but I persisted.  It feels good to have this one in the done pile.

The pattern came from the book Quilts for Scrap Lovers, by Judy Gauthier.  I can't remember if I ever used yellow fabric for sashing before, but I think it worked out okay.  It measures 43 in. x 52.5 in., and will be donated.

All that second hand fabric I bought at sales this summer and fall is really coming in handy.  The star border came from that loot, and so did many of the pieces in the blocks.  As you can see, the quilting is my usual serpentine grid with the walking foot.

The cooler fall weather inspired me to put flannel on the back.  It's soft and cozy.  I need to back more of the quilts I keep with flannel.

Check out the cat print!

In other news, I got Happy Blocks Quilt #2 finished also.  

This one has pink, purple, aqua, yellow and light blue frames around the light-background squares.

Half the fun of making these quilts has been searching for novelty squares for the centers.  There are so many wonderful fabrics being printed...

like minions and princesses..

and some nice bunnies!  The backing is the heart print I've been using up lately, and the binding is also a pink hearts print.  Lots of love from me to the little girl who gets this quilt.

Speaking of love, who is this, peaking out at us?  It's Little Guy on the playground at school.
 

Both of our younger grandsons, Buddy and Little Guy, posed for me on a lovely warm day this week.

Breaking News!  Be On The Lookout for a Smooth Criminal!

Wanted:  Snicklefritz AKA Snicky the Sneak  

Age:  1 year 

Crimes Include:

Theft:

 of an empty bobbin.  Subject carried it downstairs in his mouth for reasons unknown.

of old wool socks from a trash can.  No reason known.

of a (thankfully empty) pin cushion shaped like a strawberry.  Subject had to climb a high shelf, and repeated the offense numerous times.

 Destruction of Property:

Sewing thread chewed in half.  Evidence below.

Paper labels chewed.  Evidence below: 

Reckless Endangerment:

Subject has been known to try to play with a sewing machine needle when it was in operation.

Subject has jumped numerous times onto an ironing board, while the iron was on, causing an elderly woman to scream and/or curse loudly.

 If you see this individual, please call the Feline Bureau of Investigation.  Do not attempt to capture.  Subject is armed with furry cuteness and you may be overwhelmed.  

Have a lovely week, and Happy Halloween!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Free Table Quilts and 3-D Flying Geese Tutorial

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Look what I found on the free table!  Some assembly required, of course.

Does your quilt group have a free table?  At our guild, the free table is a place where people can bring items they no longer want and other people can take them home.  These lap quilts started out as bags of squares several years ago.  I don't even know who brought them.

Here's the brown quilt displayed on the fence around my strawberry bed.  There were hundreds of squares in the bag, some brown, some off-white, and some a dark red.  Very conveniently, they were cut 2.5 in. square.  During the pandemic, when I needed a leader/ender project, I started making nine patches from the squares.  This one finished at 38 in. square.

I had fewer red squares, so I added a paisley border to the red quilt.  I set the nine patches in vertical rows with a staggered sashing.  This one is 36 in. square.

Both quilts have this plaid backing from my stash, and were quilted in a 2 in. grid with the serpentine stitch.  Batting leftovers were just the right size for both of them.   I even used leftover binding from another quilt to finish off the brown quilt.

 These projects have been languishing in my UFO pile for literally years.  I even had the border for the red quilt chosen, but not added, until last week.  It feels great to move them out at last.  They will be donated to a local nursing home.

So, what's next?  I have lots of Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks to join into quilts, and I'm thinking about what I want to do for next year's RSC.  What about flying geese?

All the Canadian geese flying overhead and honking made me think of this, but I was seriously inspired by a book I bought on the sale table at the library by late quilting great Mary Ellen Hopkins.

Mary Ellen Hopkins was an absolute hoot!  I was lucky enough to attend a lecture she gave back in the 1980s.  There was nothing dry about her lectures, we were laughing half the time!  She had lots of clever ways to cut and piece, and was an early adopter of the rotary cutter.  She also is probably the inventor of what we sometimes call "flippy corners".  This book has some of her fun ideas.

This is the one that excited me.  She calls it Loose Goose.  It's a technique for making 3-dimensional flying geese.  With just one seam, not kidding!

The directions were a little confusing, but I finally figured it out.  Here's how I make them.

For each unit, you need one rectangle, 2.5 in. x 4.5 in., and two background squares cut 2.5 in. x 2.5 in.

1.  Fold the rectangle in half like this.

2.  Turn the folded rectangle like this, with the fold at the top.

3.  Lay the folded rectangle on top of a background square, lining up the bottom edges.  There should be about 1/4 in. of background square showing the the top.  (If the background square has right/wrong sides, it should be right side up.)

4.  Lay the second background square on top.  If it has right/wrong sides, put it right side down.  Now sew a 1/4 in. seam on the right through all layers.

 This is the result.  It looks weird, but trust me, this is right.  

Now for the tricky bit.  Use your fingers to open up the "goose" and move the fold to line up over the seam.  The points will go into the corners of the background squares.  (It's hard to describe, sorry.)

And here's what you end up with!  It needs to be pressed to hold its shape.  I press the seam on the back open to reduce bulk.

From here you can make all sorts of patterns.   If you like, you can baste the bottom of the unit together, or just catch it in the seam when sewing it to other units.

So that's my first idea for RSC 2024.  Thanks, Mary Ellen!

Here's a weird question for you.  I found this fat quarter in a bag of fabric I bought at the guild's silent auction.  Have you ever heard of this fabric?  Would you use it in a kid's quilt?  What if I cut it up so it's not as recognizable?  Or is there something else you'd do with it?  (Zipper pouch for Snoop Dogg??)

In other agriculturally related news, we took our little guy to the apple orchard this week.  He was so excited when the lady gave him an apple.  Half a bushel of apples came home with us for applesauce.  We also bought pumpkins for the porch and for pie, and pears.  So I've got some canning to do this weekend, and better get started.

Have a lovely day, and a wonderful week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 

Cynthia at Oh Scrap
 

 

 

Happy Quilt and Broken Dishes

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It's my first Rainbow Scrap Challenge finish for the year, a Happy Blocks baby-sized quilt.  My very happy grandson Buddy is modeling it for you.

We've had 3 straight days of rain, so no outside pictures I'm afraid.  I hope the photos are not too dark.

My RSC Happy Blocks were made to use up light novelty print charm squares, some commercial and some home cut.  This is the first of 3 small quilts with these blocks.  They will all be donated.

This one is backed with the same heart fabric I used on the back of the Jelly Twist quilt last week.

I'm making my blocks slightly different than the standard measurements, because I wanted to use the charm squares as is.  The centers are 5 in. cut, and the frame rectangles are 2 in. wide.  Two of the rectangles are cut 2 in. x 5 in. and two are cut 2 in. x 8 in.  The blocks finish at 7.5 in.

When my babies and grandbabies were tiny, I used to lay them down on the floor on a quilt.  This one would be good for that, it's soft and thicker and kind of bouncy due to the poly batting.  Plus there's lots of bright colors to look at.

I'm still having a bit of trouble quilting with the thicker poly batting, but I'm figuring it out.  It might go better if I did free motion quilting, but then I would have to learn how to do that!

In other news, there are a "few" UFOs in my closet, and I want to get at least some of them finished before the end of the year.  This little Broken Dishes wall hanging was made sometime last year, from repro squares from the 2.5 in. drawer plus some half square triangles left from another project.  I finally quilted and bound it this week.  Not a big deal, but one more thing moved off the to-do list.

Here's the back, a scrap of toile printed with scenes from the Civil War. 

It's weird, every time I finish something, I can't wait to finish something else!

And now for more grand kid pictures!  These two adorable kids (whom I call Mr. H and Miss E) were here for a family party for Mr. H's 15th birthday.  H is famous in the family for not wanting his photo taken, but he kindly presented us with his profile.  Miss E is holding the dog's leash, and is just as happy and sweet as she looks.
 

Little Guy and I went to the library last week, and he couldn't wait to get home to "read" his book.

The other day, he told me he wanted to write a letter for his Mama.  I told him that was a great idea, and got markers and paper out.  This is what he wrote:

Grandpa and I had quite a chuckle about it.

He's learning his letters in preschool.  This one is his favorite, not sure why.

It's still raining, so it's a good day for quilting.  Every day is a good day for quilting, isn't it?  You betcha!  Have a lovely week.

Cheers,

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

 

 

 

Jelly Twist, the Parts Department, and Rail Fence

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

A little finish on the clothesline today!  It's called Jelly Twist, and is from a pattern by Cluck Cluck Sew.

This size is not in the pattern, but it's just 16 blocks set 4 x 4, with a 3 in. finished border, so no complicated math needed, thank goodness.  It is possible to get confused making the blocks, but the pattern is thankfully in color and that helps a lot.  If there is a way to mess it up, I usually find it, but it's not difficult if you keep your wits about you, and are not me.

The border is a very subtle Toy Story print, with silhouettes and names of the main characters.
 

For quilting, I just did a 2 in. grid with the curvy serpentine stitch on my Pfaff.

On the back, I've got this print of multicolored hearts on white.  I had a big piece of it I was saving for a larger quilt, but decided to go on and use it up now. 

This quilt is brought to you by my Parts Department.  Every colored rectangle in the quilt is a different fabric.  I did not have to drag out any yardage or even cut up any scraps to piece the blocks, which meant I could start sewing right away.

This is my Parts Department.  I'm not sure who came up with the term Parts Department for our precut stash, but I love it.  Each quilter can customize her/his system to the sizes and shapes they use most often.  Most of my Parts Department stash is hand cut by me, but I do sometimes have charm squares or jelly rolls that are commercially cut.  When I cut up scraps, I trim them to the largest size possible, and then store them in the boxes and drawers.

When I first started my own Parts Department, I filled all of the drawers with 1880s reproduction scraps, because that's what I was sewing.  Gradually I started making more and more quilts with bright novelty prints, and needed room for those scraps.  Back in 2018, I decided to make a rail fence quilt as a leader and ender project, which would help me use up my 2 in. wide repro scraps and make room for the 2 in. bright scraps.

There are all kinds of ways to make rail fence blocks.  I made these with 4 strips, cut 2 in. x 6.5 in., for 6 in. finished blocks.  Each block had one strip of the brown floral, one strip of lightish print (ranging from white to dark beige) and two random colored strips.  Eventually, I had 143 blocks.

I set them 11 x 13, and then just put the top in a pile to decide on a border.  It sat in that pile for at least 4 years.  Until this week, when I finally put a 3 in. border on it!

The border is this Jo Morton print I had in the stash, that I also used for a different quilt.

So now the top is done!  But I'm not going to put off quilting it.  I'm not going to quilt it at all!  I'm donating it, and the wonderful ladies in my quilt group will quilt it.  I think it will look nice with some curvy long arm quilting stitches.  It can be warm and comforting for someone who needs it.

Here's what's left of the 2 in. reproduction strips--just one plastic shoe box.
 

And now the drawer is filled with 2 in. wide bright print strips, bagged up by color.  I can easily grab what I need, especially when making blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

In other news, the weather here has been weird!  On Thursday, the boys and I went to the park for a little while.  The temperature was in the high 70s (F), and it had even been over 80 at the beginning of the week.

Buddy was showing off his acrobatic skills.

Friday, the high temp here was a cool and rainy 60.  This morning when I got up it was 41 degrees F.  Time to get out the winter coats, and make sure we have hats and gloves/mittens ready.

Snicklefritz likes snuggling into a pile of quilts on days like this.  Or on any day.  Me too!

Have a lovely day, whatever the weather, and a good week ahead.

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Check out these great linky parties!

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy