A Happy New Year

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Happy New Year!

The hardest thing about blogging for me is coming up with titles for my posts!  This week it was easy:  I took the title from this postcard.

One hundred and thirteen years ago, in 1911, my great grandmother sent this New Years card to her mother and father, my great great grandparents.  Here's the text of it:

Dear parents:  Thought I would send you a card telling you the mine buildings partly burned last night.  How is Pearl's foot?  Will and Richard aren't well.  

Bessie

Bessie turned 21 years old on December 28, the day before the card was posted.  She and her husband Will Risley had been married for 2 1/2 years, and their son Richard (my grandfather) was about 18 months old.  Pearl was Bessie's younger sister, 15 years old at the time.

Communication in rural Indiana was so different then than it is now.  It's unlikely that either family had a telephone, so letters and postcards were very important for sharing local news and family concerns.

Bessie was a quilter, and I am lucky enough to have some of her quilts.  I wonder if she sewed to keep her worries over Will and Richard and Pearl in check, or if she even had time with a sick toddler and husband to look after.

We had a lovely Christmas celebration this week, with food and presents and games.  And of course, the obligatory group photo.

Our oldest daughter made us some new picture ornaments for our tree.  The top two are her children, Mr. H and Miss E.  (Mr. H has since decided to cut his hair and looks much older.)  Somehow we didn't have an ornament with Little Guy's photo, so my daughter made one for him too.  Picture ornaments are always my favorites, even if they become tattered.

In spite of all the festivities, I actually finished a quilt!  That's because all I had to do was bind it lol, and I did that completely by machine.

The quilt was a Block of the Month by Barbara Brackman called Antebellum Album, which celebrated signature quilts made in the 1840s and 1850s by school girls, North and South.  It is free, and is still available online (Click HERE).

This was the first block, called Wandering Lover.  I started the quilt in late January 2018.  

It's not meant to be a Christmas quilt.  Red and green were very fashionable colors for quilts in this time period, and I had lots of the reproduction prints in my stash.

My friend Joey Mahieu quilted this one for me recently.  The main blocks have these wonderful feathered circles quilted on them, which were placed perfectly, as you can see in this block.  Ms. Brackman encouraged participants to write and draw in permanent ink on our blocks.  On this one, I wrote May the Circle Be Unbroken.

You can see more of Joey's beautiful quilting in the feathered border.  I love running my hands over it.

The backing is a wide back from Connecting Threads.  The binding is a green print that is also in the top.

I'm keeping this one, and I'll probably bring it out at Christmas just because of the colors.

Are you thinking about the upcoming New Year?  I'm trying to decide what to make for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.  

This is a problem I need to tackle.  It's my "Big Scraps" basket.  I define Big Scraps as those at least 6 in. wide but smaller than a fat quarter.  As I get big scraps, I bundle them up by color and stuff them into this bushel basket until needed.  I'm sure you tell it's getting out of hand.

This year I'm going to concentrate on using these big scraps to make RSC quilts.  I wonder how many quilts I can get out of this basket?

Now for something completely silly.

I bought a little waffle maker!  It was an impulse buy, for sure.  I was walking by it in the store.  It was adorable, and made cute little 4 in. waffles.  Not even expensive.  And they had purple ones!  It practically hopped in the cart.

Following the directions carefully, I made little waffles this morning, and they came out great!  The young grandsons will be here several days next week.  We'll see if they like waffles.

This year is coming to a close in just a few days.  As always, 2024 was a mix of good and bad times, joy and heartache.  Next year will probably be the same.  The joys make it worthwhile and help us weather the bad times.

I'm wishing joy for you in the coming week, and all next year.  Happy New Year!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

  

Purple Butterflies

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Today I have two quilts to show.  

First, the small quilt for donation, which is also a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project.  I made DOZENS of string blocks this year, and this is only the second quilt.

Lots of skinny strips and triangles make up these blocks.  I always feel thrifty when making them.  Can you spot the purple butterfly print?

The border is a different purple butterfly print.  Years ago I bought a bag of fabric at Goodwill, and there were SIX YARDS of this fabric in it.  I have loved using it.  It goes with most of the colors of the string blocks.

I've pinned up the back here to show you.  I bought this cotton fabric at the Winter Quilt Show a few years ago.  It cost $2 for a 2 yard piece.  Great, right?  But there was a problem.

These Easter theme borders were on either side of the dots.  They might have looked a little weird sideways on the quilt, so I cut them off.  (Don't worry, I'll find a use for them.)  The resulting dot print was narrow, but I pieced it to make it wide enough.  For quilting I did diagonal lines through the blocks.  The binding is a scrap of solid lavender.

So that's quilt #1, one of my usual small quilts for kids.  The next one is different.

This is officially a UFO.  And it has kind of a long story.

My niece Jenny died in August of 2021 from a massive aneurism at the age of 39.  Butterflies were her favorite thing, and purple/lavender was her favorite color.  I started making this quilt that fall, with the plan to give it to my sister as a comfort quilt.  I found this pieced butterfly pattern/tutorial online (click HERE), and started making blocks from Kaffe Fassett fabrics and light prints from my stash.

I had all the blocks made and the border (also a Kaffe print) ordered when my sister died in May of 2022.  For a while I couldn't even look at them.  I set the project aside.  What was I going to do with it now?  I didn't think it would be a good fit for her husband or her son.

In time, I decided to finish the quilt as a comfort quilt for me.  My friend Joey Mahieu is a professional quilter, and she quilted it for me.  I picked it up the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Can you see the hearts and swirls in the quilting?  Joey did a wonderful job (as always!).

This week I bound it.  The backing is a soft flannel, and Snicky the cat loved it so much he wouldn't let me sew!  I had to wait until he left the room.

I can't wait to snuggle up under the quilt after the Christmas quilts are put away.

Speaking of Christmas, it's almost here!  This week Little Guy had his program at school.  You can probably tell he loved it!  We loved it too.

The snow this week feels very seasonally appropriate. We will probably get lots more after the holidays, this is winter in Wisconsin, after all.
 

Tomorrow I'll be baking cookies with my daughters and grandchildren.  Icing and sprinkles and sugar, oh my!  

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!  And happy quilting to everyone!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Happy Variations

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

This week's story is a tale of two quilts.  

This one:

and this one:

(It was below zero when I photographed this one.  Of course it had to be an inside picture!)

There is definitely a family resemblance, but they're not exactly alike.  Both of them are variations on Happy Blocks quilts.

First up is this one, with a square in the center.  The only real difference from the usual Happy Block is the size of the center squares, which is 3.5 in. cut, instead of the more common 5 in. or 4.5 in..

Why so small?  Because this is what I started with!  The Amazing Colleen, a member of our quilt group's charity committee, brought me a lovely bunch of donated scraps and fabric, including these novelty squares.  The white edges were tiny and looked as though the blocks had been cut out of a top.  (No idea what the story was, sorry.)  I trimmed them to 3.5 in., which was the biggest I could get.

All that was left after trimming was a stack of 3.5 in. squares and this trash.

I framed each square with solid strips cut 2 in. wide, to make 6 in. finished blocks.  I hope it will be fun for kids to look at all the different prints.  They may need to have someone explain what phonograph records are.

The border is a Sesame Street print I bought at the Great Wisconsin Quilt Show in September.  The binding is a color I'm calling "Elmo red", it goes so well with that furry little guy.

The second quilt is actually made from Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt blocks from 2023.  I've been  thinking of different ways to set these very simple house blocks.  Framing them like Happy Blocks was an obvious choice.

I think of both of these quilts as I Spy quilts, since none of the novelty centers are repeated.  The houses are top-stitched to a 5 in. square, and then framed with 2 in. cut strips, making blocks that finish at 7.5 in.

Fun fact--There are two Dora's in the quilt:  Dora the Explorer (above) and D. W., Arthur's little sister from the Arthur books and TV show, whose full name is Dora Winifred Read (shown in the previous photo).

The house quilt's border is another Sesame Street print I bought from the same vendor.  The binding is the same "Elmo red" fabric.

Sometimes I think I should make bigger quilts more often.  Probably they'd be more useful.  But as a mother and grandmother I remember how nice it was to have small quilts to put on the floor for the babies.  And they were much easier to roll up and take with us on outings (the quilts, not the babies lol!).

Both of these quilts will be donated locally.

In other news, Buddy had his Christmas program at school.  There was lots of singing and excitement.  It always gives me a little boost of holiday spirit.  And the kids are adorable.  Especially our guy, of course!

I hope you're having a lovely week, and not stressing out too much about the holidays.  Maybe this holiday joke from my friend Debbie C. will help.  

What do you call an unidentified gingerbread man?  

John Dough

I laughed out loud at this one.

Thanks for reading, and have a great week!

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Melva at Sew and Tell

P.S.  The quilts I donated to the GSAFE auction brought in $510.00!  This year's goal of $40,000 was more than met.

Basket of Chips, Finished At Last

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

I've got some help working on the To-Do quilt pile!  Snicky, shown here in mid-stretch, is providing moral support.  He also took off with my thread at one point, but nobody's perfect.

All this Basket quilt needed was a binding.  Easy, right?  Why do I procrastinate on binding?  With Snicky's "help" I got it done by hand this week.

My procrastination with this quilt didn't start with the binding though.  Back in 2013 when I started this blog, I made a visual list of six quilts I wanted to finish, and this top was there!  It's actually embarrassing.  

Isn't the quilting beautiful?  I had it quilted by my friend Joey Mahieu at Against the Grain in Mineral Point, Wisconsin.  I asked for fancy, and she delivered!

Check out the feathered vine in the border!  I am over the moon!

I bought the wide back from Connecting Threads online.  The binding is just odd strips of dark blue reproduction fabric.

It's been a long journey from start to finish on this quilt.  I started with a traditional pattern called Basket of Chips, and reproduction scraps cut with my Accuquilt cutter.  I found the setting fabric, a Mary Koval print, at a quilt show.  Then I dithered about the borders when I didn't have enough of either of the two fabrics I wanted, and finally used both (one on the sides, the other on the top and bottom).  It sat patiently in the sewing room closet for literal YEARS before I finally ordered the backing from Connecting Threads.  And it's now been almost two more years since Joey finished the quilting.

It's done, hurray!  I am so happy that the quilt is done at last, and we can enjoy it.  I'm not going to keep beating myself up for taking this long to finish.  Life is busy, and quilts are patient.

Also in the closet To-Do pile was the fabric for these pillow cases.  It didn't take long to sew them up and move another project along.

Snicklefritz the cat managed to get into most of my photos this week!  He keeps hanging around, hoping I'll take a nap.

Don't let this happy face fool you, our Buddy was quite sick this week.  Nothing serious, just a virus, but miserable nonetheless.  I took this photo on the second day, when he was almost back to normal.  After two days he was himself again, and happy to go back to school.

I hope everyone is feeling well, and taking care of yourself.  Have a wonderful week!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap