The Seersucker Quilt

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

The quilt guild I belong to does a lot of charity work.  We make quilts of all sizes, plus many other items like walker bags and wheelchair bags for nursing homes, bucket hats and port pillows for cancer patients, toiletry bags for foster children and unhoused people, flannel hearts for NICU babies, and recently book pillows for kids.  Because of this work people frequently give us fabric to make these items.  All kinds of fabric.  Including seersucker.

As you may know, seersucker is a light weight puckery fabric, meant to be worn in summer and/or hot climates.  It has gone in and out of fashion for more than a hundred years, and was originally made of 100% cotton, although now it's usually a blend.  Men's suits are still sometimes made of it.  I have had blouses and dresses of seersucker, and made dresses for my daughters with it when they were children.  Due to the puckered weave it doesn't need ironing.  By the way, the weird name comes from Persian for milk and sugar.  (Click HERE for the Wikipedia article.)

Can you make quilts from seersucker?  I had never thought of using seersucker to make a quilt until I saw a kit cut by our charity committee at a guild meeting.  It was for a baby quilt, which of course is right up my alley, so I decided to try it.  The squares were already cut, so I arranged them in identical vertical rows and offset every other row.

Then I trimmed off the top and bottom like this.  I didn't have any seersucker yardage for a border, and I wasn't sure about sewing anything else to it, so I left it like this.  The sewing was simple, and I didn't need to iron anything.

Here's the back, a regular 100% cotton print.  The batting is polyester.  I bound it with the same fabric.

I admit, I am a self-described cotton snob.  I was nervous about working with poly cotton, since some of them are flimsy and pill at the first washing, but the seersucker worked out okay.

And just look what was at the meeting this week--a kit cut from cute ocean-themed seersucker!  Yep, this one came home with me too.  I'm not worried about using it anymore, but I need to remember to turn down the iron temperature if I need to press.

I would LOVE to know if anybody else has made a seersucker quilt.  I don't think I've ever even seen one.

Aqua month progresses on!  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month had me pulling out  scraps to go with the parts department strips and rectangles this week.  

It was a good chance to use some Dr. Seuss fabric I've been saving.

More 3-D flying geese!

In other news, I attended a meeting of the Wisconsin Quilt Study Group last Saturday, held at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts in Cedarburg.

Our topic was white work quilts, which were amazing but sadly don't photograph well.  We always have show and tell of member's new acquisitions, and I snapped a photo of this amazing antique quilt.  Such tiny triangles, perfectly hand pieced, with lovely quilting!  The background is a light yellow, it's not showing up well on my monitor.  It dates to the 1930s or so.

These beautiful hollyhocks were on the museum grounds, with the old lambing shed behind them.

In even more other news, we had a birthday party this week.  Our eldest grandson turned 19!  He's the tall guy with the awesome hair, shown here with his family.  Buddy and Little Guy miss him now that he's moved into an apartment.  I can hardly believe how fast he's growing up.

At my age, years go by quickly anyway, but the summer just seems to zoom past!  How are we nearly to the end of July already?  

Have a lovely week, everyone!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday 

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap