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