Sesame Street and Bowties

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

One last flannel baby quilt got finished this week, and sent on its way.  As you can see, it's a very simple design, just scrappy 4 patches paired with alternate blocks.  Lots of blue in this one, so it fits with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month for February.

The alternate blocks are from a Sesame Street print.  Around here we love Sesame Street.  My grandson Buddy's favorite character was "Melmo".  (He couldn't say Elmo at first.)  Later we both loved Cookie Monster and Gonger and their food truck.  I learned a lot about foods, like how cashews are grown.  If the kids were still up for it, I'd still watch!

Lots of colorful flannel scraps ended up here.  I cut the kit up a while back and had it ready to sew.

Just about all of the fabrics in the quilt came from pre-owned fabric sales, including the back (the one with stars) and the binding, which came from the most recent sale a few Saturdays ago.

The deadline for the donations to the Community Baby Shower was the end of January, so I packed all of these quilts up and delivered them on Thursday, after taking one last photo.  Bye bye, quilts!  Make somebody happy and warm!

Now on to tackling the blue scraps in the Big Scraps bushel basket.  I should say that blue has been a favorite color for me all my life, so naturally I have lots of blue fabric.  There were 3 bundles of blue in the basket:  light, medium, and dark.  I'm hoping to consolidate to one bundle by the end of the month.

I started with Bowtie blocks.  They measure 8 in. finished.  I cut 4.5 in. strips from the scraps for the big squares and 2.5 in. strips for the small ones.  I'm also using up some of the light Big Scraps, which is a bonus!

I am so happy to use all these fun prints!  It was hard to stop cutting them.  I want to make some twin sized quilts this year for a local charity that uses them, so I'm making some larger blocks like these.  And lots of them!

 I might have gotten carried away!

This is my "vintage" iron from the 1970s or 1980s.  I bought it at a tag sale last May for $1.00, and I have bragged on it on this blog repeatedly.  This is an iron that gets VERY hot immediately and stays hot, which even improved my piecing.  Sadly, she finally burned herself out this week and had to go to that great appliance dump in the sky.  She will be missed!  I have my back up iron, of course, but it's not the same.  I'll be looking for a replacement.

Little Lizzy aka Queen Elizabeth III is doing well and working on fitting in to our household.  Snicky is still not a big fan, but I think he's coming around.  She is hard to photograph as she's usually running and playing.

I love this picture my younger daughter took of her 3 sons.  The biggest brother lives on his own now, but still stays close to family.  His little brothers adore him.  I adore them all!

Have a good week, everyone!  Happy quilting!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these awesome quilters and their blogs:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

Trip Around the World, New Kitten, and Pink Scraps

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

How are you doing this week?  I find quilting is great for being distracted.  And for keeping warm!

Sorry for the lighting here.  This was the first flannel quilt I cut out in January, now finally finished.  It's a little pink Trip Around the World made to donate to the annual Community Baby Shower.

Here's what it looks like inside the house.  The poly batting makes it very soft and warm.  I know many parents don't put quilts/blankets in cribs anymore, but this one will be good for cuddling or laying baby on the floor to play.

The back is this flannel print, Aunt Grace from Judie Rothermel.  When I first saw it at a sale, I thought it was vintage.  Judie really knows her stuff!

I used up most of my pink flannel prints here.  Giraffes, teddy bears, rainbows, etc.!

Look what happened when I left the room!  I found this guy snuggled under the quilt sleeping.  Easy to tell that Snicky is a fan of flannel quilts.  (Me too!)

Snicky has a new little sister!  In our family, we take turns naming our animals, and this time it was my husband's turn.  So this little fluffy girl is named Queen Elizabeth III.  Yes, really!  I didn't really want to tell the vet's office her government name, since they call it out when it's your turn to see the vet, and I would feel really silly.  We're just going by Lizzy.  She's about 7 weeks old, and got her first shots on Wednesday.

Turns out it's tough to take a picture of a kitten that barely slows down, but these were the best I could do.  Lizzy was found outside, and rescued by a friend of my eldest daughter.  Our daughter looked after her for us until we could come and get her.  Now we're working on socializing her, and getting Snicky to stop being quite so grumpy about it.

We're almost done with pink month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so I thought I'd cut up the pink scraps I bought at the big sale.  Above is the "before" picture.

The UFO I bought at the sale had LOTS of these big triangles.  I have no idea what the original quilter was making, and didn't have a definite use for the triangles, so I cut them up like this.  The rectangle was cut into either a 3.5 in. square and small rectangle or a 2.5 in. x 4.5 in. rectangle.

Here's the "after" photo.  All of these are now useful pieces.  The bigger triangles will probably end up being corners on string blocks.

I used some of the smaller triangles to make more of these blocks.  I started making them with the bonus triangles from the heart blocks, but wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them.

Now I know!  I'm going to make a variation on the traditional Sisters Choice block.  Now with extra scrappiness!

My goal this year is to use up lots of my Big Scraps.  So how did I do this month?

Well, not great.  Here's what's left of the pink bundle.  This might be even MORE than what I started with.  Oh, dear, I hope the whole year doesn't work out like this!

In other news, our youngest grandsons were here all day Monday and Tuesday.  Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. day of course.  Tuesday the schools were cold due to extreme cold.  It was -13 F in the morning, and even colder with the wind chill.  The guys found things to do with ships and castles and such while Snicky "supervised" from the couch.

Little Lizzy even got in the act after they went home.

It's warmed up here now.  We're at a balmy 29 degrees F!  Much better.  Plus it's a beautiful sunny day.  A great day for quilting!  But aren't they all?

Have a lovely week, everyone!

Linking up with these fabulous blogs:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Two Little Quilts, A Big Sale, and Bright Hopes

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

I like a challenge.  My wonderful quilt guild has been having several challenges lately, and I was glad to participate.  This particular challenge was called Dots and Zigzags.  We were given paper bags with a small amount of zigzag print and dotted print, both in the same color.  The object was to use the fabrics to make anything we'd like, and bring it to the January meeting.

You guessed it, my fabrics were pink!  Which made it an extra challenge for me, since I'm not the biggest fan of pink.  Both fabrics in the bag were a kind of salmon color. We could add any fabrics we liked to the ones in the bag.  At first I was kind of stuck on bright vs. salmon vs. light pink.  Did they actually go together?  Then I found the green print in my stash, and noticed it had ALL the pinks in it.  That helped!  I even put the salmon-y zigzags next to a bright dotted print.

Of course I made a baby quilt!  It's just where my mind goes lol.  I pieced a row of light pink zigzags and another of dark pink zigzags and added the strips.  Simple quilting and voila.

The challenge entries were displayed at our last meeting, and I was blown away by their creativity and workmanship!  I also had no idea there were so many zigzag prints in existence.  My little quilt will be donated locally.

Here's the back, an adorable bird and flower print, with lots of pink!  (Debbie, does this look familiar?)  I was lucky enough to have this yardage in my stash, because my friend and I went to a sale last Saturday.

The sale was at the Textile Arts Center in Madison.  All sorts of sewing/knitting/crafting items donated to the center were sold for great prices.  Above is the major "loot" I got.  I always think of myself like a pirate at these sales, scooping up treasure.  Arr!  All told I bagged over 40 yards of pre-owned fabric.

That doesn't even count the scraps!  I made a scrap rainbow out of them when I got home.  Lots of them came from a UFO someone had started.  I'm looking forward to cutting them up.

Fabric shopping is fun of course, but the best part of the day was spending time with my friend.  We went out to lunch and spent time catching up, and Debbie gave me these fat quarters and thread as a birthday present.  She knows just what I like!  And the pink one in front is a cat print!  Thanks, Debbie, for a great day.

I'm still making flannel quilts for the annual Community Baby Shower, and I finished this one this week.  I'm having a terrible time getting the color right in the photos.  The background is actually a soft yellow.

The giraffes and happy monkeys were fun to work with. They also came from a sale a couple of years ago. 

Here's the back, a star print from another sale.  I probably have enough left to back two more small quilts.  The simple quilting is easy to do with the poly batting, and makes the quilt soft and cozy.

Snicky the cat thinks so!  I had to make him get off the quilt so I could bind it.  It now comes with cat cuddles.  Don't worry, it will be thoroughly washed before it goes to a baby.

This is a great time of year at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  It's so much fun deciding which quilt blocks to make all year in all the colors.  I chose the Bright Hopes block to use up my 2.5 in. squares and 2.5 in. x 4.5 in. rectangles.

It's fun finding cute prints for these blocks.

The one with the unicorn center is my favorite!

Hubby and I are very excited this morning.  We're going to pick up our new kitten!  She's a lovely little rescue that our oldest daughter has been looking after for us.  I hope Snicky will be a good big brother to her.

Have a lovely week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these wonderful ladies:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Pink Flannel, Rainbows, Hearts, and Bonus Blocks

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Can you tell it's pink month?

Yes, it is definitely pink month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for January.  I apologize for the indoor-only photos, but it was snowing here today.  So I hung this pink flannel scrap quilt on the closet door in the guest room where it's warm and dry to snap a few pictures.

This is one of the kits I cut last year when I was straightening up my flannel stash.  It's a 4 patch, as you can see. The alternate unpieced block is a rainbow print.  

I quilted a 3 in. grid in the main section.  It was easy to do that with the 4 patches by following the center seams, but I had to sew right down the middle of the 6 in. alternate blocks in both directions.  I've marked this before with a quilting marker, but I wanted to try something else.

This is a Hera marker.  The name is kind of misleading, because it doesn't really make any "marks".  You use the curved end to crease the fabric, and quilt it while you can still see the crease.  The big advantage is not having any marks on the quilt to wash out or erase.

I've had a Hera marker for a long time but never really used it.  This little flannel quilt seemed like a good place to try it out.  I used it with a ruler as a straight-edge, and it worked great.  The creases  showed up well on the soft flannel.  I'm really happy with it.

Here's the back, diaper pin print flannel!  Does anybody remember diaper pins?  I used cloth diapers with my babies in the late 1970s-early 1980s and pinned them on with this kind of big pin.  (There's a trick to it to keep from sticking the baby.)  Once disposable diapers became readily available, cloth diapers and diaper pins were used less and less.  I wonder if young moms today even know what they are!

Trying to decide which blocks to make all year for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is hard:  there are so many great blocks!  I have 8 in. Bowties already, and now I'm adding 6 in. Hearts.  They're fun and easy to make, plus they mix well with other blocks.

This heart is made of a heart print!  With a side of rainbows.

I'm making the blocks like this, with "flippy corners".  

When these big pieces are cut off, I sew them into HSTs, and trim them to 2.5 in. square.

For every heart block, I also get 2 bonus HSTs.

I'm adding two squares from the 2.5 in. square drawer to the 2 triangle squares to make these little blocks.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet.

I might put 4 of them together and make star blocks.

Or maybe something completely different!

Our youngest grandsons were back in school this week, but last week they spent some time with us.  One day we went to an indoor playground, and they absolutely loved it.

This giant slide was one of their favorite things.  I never could get a good picture.  They were going so fast they were just blurs.

The weeks seem to fly by like that too.  Just an exciting, happy blur.

I hope we all can enjoy the good times while they're whirling by.

Have a lovely week, everyone.

Cheers for reading this,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at SoScrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap