Happy Blocks, Happy New Year!

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It's the first quilt finish here at Treadlestitches for 2024!  My grandson aka Buddy is holding up his new quilt.  I was quilting it on New Years Day, and added the label the day after.  (Please forgive the light pollution in the photo!)

Buddy has designed the last 3 quilts I made for him and his little brother, and this one is no exception.  He chose the fabrics for the centers of the Happy Blocks from my stash (we made two in each print, so he could play a matching game) and he laid them out into rows.  I did all the sewing.

Last year was The Year of the Happy Blocks in my sewing room.  I chose that block for one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks each month, which resulted in three baby quilts for charity (30 blocks each) for a total of 90 blocks.  I made some blocks to donate to Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Compassion quilts (didn't count them, or did and can't remember!), plus 56 Happy Blocks in Buddy's quilt.  So that's well over 150 blocks.  Whew!  Good thing they're easy!

And they are so much fun to make!  I used home cut charm squares (5 in. square) for the centers and 2 in. wide strips for the outsides.  Buddy's quilt uses only solids for the 2 in. strips.  The squares were mostly novelty prints, but Buddy chose some dots and stripes etc. to mix it up.  He's a natural.

Buddy added two squares of this Thomas the Tank Engine print, just for his little brother who is a big fan.

Of course little brother had to get into the pictures too!

The backing is a fun Star Wars print.  Both boys are very into Star Wars right now.

The label on the back is another Star Wars print.  I've used a piece of construction paper to cover the part of the label with Buddy's real name on it.

There is rumored to be another grandson quilt on the drawing board, this time for Little Guy.  R2-D2 is Little Guy's favorite Star Wars character.  There might be an R2-D2 panel in the center of the new quilt, given to me by the lovely and generous Colleen T. 

Meanwhile, I'm still making baby quilts for the Community Baby Shower.  More on that next week.

New year, new color!  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge rides again, and January's color is green.  I'm making these 3-D flying geese units.  (Click HERE for the directions.  You'll need to scroll down the page, sorry.)

I'm not sure yet how I'm going to set them.  There are so many options in traditional blocks.  Also, I may mix up the colors in the blocks.  Stay tuned for updates.

Here are my "big scraps" in green, pieces that are smaller than a fat quarter and larger than 6 in. wide.  Looks like some fun stuff in there, I can't wait to dive in!

This week, everything has started going back to "normal, and I am so glad!  I love the holidays, but it's nice to get started on a brand new year.  Happy 2024, everyone!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Thanks VERY much to the quilters hosting the following link ups!  I can't wait to stop typing and go see what everybody else is working on.

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