Little Brick Ladders, Radio Windmills, and More Scraps

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Not a great week for stitching around here, but I did get this little top sewn.  I'm glad I took the pictures yesterday when it was sunny since we're having a light rain this morning, but the wind was too wild for clothesline photos yesterday so I laid it on the grass.

There are lots of different reasons for starting a new donation quilt.  Sometimes I want to try an exciting new pattern, or use a specific fabric.  This time I needed a leader/ender project, and wanted to relieve the overcrowding in this box of rectangles that I call Little Bricks.  My little bricks measure 2.5 in. x 3.5 in., and are cut from scraps.  (BTW, this photo shows the box AFTER I made the quilt!  More Little Bricks quilts are in my future.)

I call this block Little Brick Ladder.  The pattern I'm using here is a variation on others I've seen in books and online.  It's similar to a rail fence.  Each block has 3 of the little bricks plus two rectangles on the sides cut from a light fabric.  The side pieces measure 2 in. x 6.5 in. cut.  The blocks themselves are 6 in. finished.

I have LOTS of one-way-design prints in my scraps.  It's really common in the novelty prints I love.  For this quilt, I made nearly half of the blocks orienting the prints horizontally, and nearly the other half orienting them vertically, with a few of the blocks using only prints that could look well either way.  The light jelly bean print came from the museum sale last month.  (There were 5 whole yards of it, so you can expect to see it in my quilts again!)

The border is this aqua Dr. Seuss print.  I'm trying to get out of my rut of dark blue borders on everything, so I was glad I had enough of this fabric left.

I will be quilting this top myself.   Piecing is easy to do when life is busy, but quilting the tops takes more time.  I am really hoping I can get something done this weekend.

Purple piecing is fun!  Purple is my favorite color, and it's the July color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I had a nice little bundle of scraps for the big triangles on these Radio Windmill blocks, but it was harder to find light charm squares with purple in them for the centers.  I actually used one fabric twice.  Can you guess which one?

Yes, you're right, it was the pickle ball print!  I actually bought that fat quarter in a quilt shop!

But this block was my favorite this week.  The outside triangles are one of my very favorite Kaffe Fassett prints.  The merry go round horses print was from a scrap I found in the basement clean out and immediately reclaimed.

Look at all this!!!  A friend gave me a wonderful gift this week (Thank you so much, Joey!)  We exchanged boxes at the museum meeting last Saturday.  I gave her some vintage block sets etc. from the basement cleanout, and she gave me a box loaded with wonderful prints for the kid quilts (above).

But wait, there's even more!  I made a scrap rainbow with the smaller pieces just to show them off.

Still more!  Light scraps on the left, big scraps on the right!  

Plus a giant bag of strings!  I'm still going through them.  These are bright ones I've sorted out.  There might be some purple in there!  Thanks again, Joey!  I can hardly wait to start sewing these up!

Even though we had cloudy skies this week, we still got outside.  Buddy was challenging himself on the Monkey Bars ...

and Little Guy was following along as always.  They're wearing their 4th of July shirts just because they like them.

Our shy kitten Lizzy is still getting used to the boys being here every day, and she's very interested in what they are doing.  While they were playing, she ran into the room and stole a little plastic chicken, taking it to her lair in the basement.  The boys laughed and said she could keep it.  After the kids left on Wednesday, she checked out the rest of their toys and curled up in the corral.

We are having a good summer here.  The summer produce has been lovely, with black raspberries now stacked in the freezer and peaches waiting for me to peel and can them.  I hope I can get more sewing done this week, but if not it's okay, it will wait for me.

Have a lovely week, whatever the weather brings.

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday