A Small Quilt Top, and A Tale of Two Quilt Shows

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

This week in sewing, I've been drifting from one project to another and not completely finishing anything.  Maybe I'm just distractible lately, or maybe I've just had some fun distractions like quilt shows.  Anyway, I got this small top together as a donation quilt.

I didn't even make most of the blocks!  A kind person donated them to our quilt group, and they were passed along to me because many of them used kid prints, like the Paw Patrol block.  And you know how much I love kid prints!

I separated the kid blocks from the rest and made 6 more.  I thought I had never seen this block before at first, but upon further inspection it's a Disappearing Nine Patch variation.  The squares for the nine patch are cut at 3.5 in.  Then the block is cut down the middle vertically and horizontally, and the resulting 4 squares are reassembled into this block.  Tricky when using one-way prints, but fun. 

The top is approx. 40 in. x 48 in., and I hope to quilt and bind it soon.

The sashing and border are dark blue--does that count as dark for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge?

The black Stretched Stars definitely count.  I don't usually use black prints in my donation quilts for kids, but I need to rethink that.  There are so many cute fabrics.  Just one more way the Rainbow Scrap Challenge has pushed me to think differently about color.

Now on to the Quilt Shows!

On Friday Sept. 6 I met a friend at the Great Wisconsin Quilt Show in Madison.  She and I have a long-standing tradition of seeing this show together, even back when it was called Quilt Expo.  In the last few years Covid and other health concerns got in our way, but we were back at it this year and loving it.

The quilts on display were, as always, amazing, and were made by quilters from all over.  I took lots of photos for my own use, but I will restrain myself from including any here out of respect for the makers.  Photos from the 2024 show are not yet up, but you can click HERE to see a gallery of the winning quilts from previous years.

Here's what I "won":  fabric!  All the fabric I bought was $8 per yard or less, which seems a lot like winning to me, especially when it usually retails for $12 per yard and up.  I roamed from vendor booth to vendor booth, scooping up the sale fabric.  Even though I am being more careful with buying new fabric, I'm not going to bypass cute prints at these prices!  I am already putting some of it to use.

I bought these 4 prints at a unique booth called Sew Renewable.    The fabric is all "pre-owned".  As they say on their web page:

 Our fabric is sourced primarily through purchases from estate sales, estate auctions, and donations by friends who no longer sew.

Keeping fabric out of landfills is a major goal of our  business.  

I love this!  They travel to quilt shows around the country.  They also have plans to sell directly from the web site, as they have apparently done in the past.  Click HERE to check them out.

Of course the quilt show was much much more than shopping.  It's even more than just viewing the jaw-dropping quilts!  We had time to talk and visit and participate in something we both love.  What a wonderful day!

So that was ONE quilt show.  Just yesterday (Friday), I went to the SECOND one.  It was a smaller, local show held at the county fairgrounds.   Two quilt shows in two weeks!  I am so lucky.

The local show creates these patterns, that they call "Seed Packets", and they hand them out for FREE with admission every year.  They are well written, and I have even made a quilt or two from them in past years. 

The quilts themselves were amazing!  Again, I can't publish the photos, but I took pictures to look at later and enjoy.  All kinds of styles were present, from traditional to modern and back again.

This was something new:

Every year this show has an area called "Granny's Attic", where they sell fabric, notions, etc. donated by their members.  Usually some items are priced individually, and most fabrics can be purchased by the grocery bag for a set price.  This year, however, shoppers were allowed to choose whatever they would like and give a donation of money in whatever amount they wished.  I have to admit, it was kind of hard to figure out what I owed them.  In the end, I guessed, basing my guess on how many grocery bags' worth I estimated I had.

This is what I ended up taking home.  There are yards of cottons and flannels, a small unfinished quilt that I plan to finish and donate, and some lovely piles of scraps.

Today I am washing the fabrics (but not the little scraps!), and hanging them outside in our beautiful sunny weather.

We are so lucky to have quilt shows to attend, from the big national/international ones to the local ones put on by guilds, who do all the hard work for free out of love for quilting.  There are always new things to learn, too, from classes and from viewing inspiring work by fellow quilters.  I would go even if there wasn't any fabric on sale!

I have less time with my youngest grandsons now that they're both in school full time, so we make the best of what time we have.  Almost every day we go out into the park.  They asked me to take this picture of them at the playground.

I hope you have as much fun as my grandsons and I have had this week!  Take care!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap