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