I Heart Aqua Prints, Crumbs, and Old Projects

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

How are your aqua blocks coming along?

What with one thing and another I did not get much done in the sewing room this week except for a few blocks.  These hearts are aqua for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month.

I was a little surprised at how many aqua scraps I had, especially in novelty prints.  (The top right heart is a dinosaur bones print.  How often do you see something like that?)

I have had some of these scraps for literally years, like the cat print on the bottom right.  Someday I will use the last scrap of it, and I'll be sad.

Favorite block:  Winnie the Pooh and Tigger too.  I still have a lot of this fabric, mostly in smaller pieces.  It will probably turn up in aqua blocks for the RSC for years to come.

Does this ever happen to you?  Sometimes I'll be working on a project and find I've used up all the pieces for the leaders and enders project I'm doing at the same time.  Then I'll be hunting around in the sewing room for something else to use as leaders and enders, and accidentally (!) start a new project.  

That's what these crumb blocks are.  I have a small bin on my cutting table for "crumbs", those small bits that can't be cut into any of the pieces I save.  For me, that means anything smaller than a 2 in. square.  

When the little bin gets full, I sort the pieces by color, and store them in a small bag inside a larger bag of strings the same color.  (The aqua crumbs are getting out of hand!)  I start the crumb blocks with the little pieces, and finish them with strings from the bag.  I only got three made this week, but they were fun to do.  Plus they used up small scraps and strings!  This will be a long term project, with no pressure to finish soon.

I still have lots of block sets I made for last year's RSC, like these 3-D flying geese.  (Click HERE for the post with a tutorial.)  It was still in the block bin because I couldn't decide what I was doing with them. 

I ended up going back to my original idea and putting them together like this.  It's aqua month, so I did aqua blocks first of course.  Maybe I'll get a couple of 2024 quilts done before we start putting together the 2025 RSC blocks.

It's been hot here this week, 92F yesterday, so we've done some inside things, like crafts.  Buddy had fun making these Minecraft and Super Mario items from Perler beads.  They're assembled on a hard plastic base and melted with an iron.

My hubby made this one.  Do you think he might have been influenced by living with a quilter?

Whatever the weather at your house, I hope you are having a good week, with time to do the things you love.  Like quilting!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

  

Kid Quilt and More Multicolor Blocks

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

This little quilt is finished at last.  I showed the top a couple of weeks ago.  A big stack of these blocks were donated to our quilt group, and I finished some of them into a child's quilt to donate.

In my head, I call this The Paw Patrol Quilt, because of this block in the upper left.  It was on top of the stack when I received them.  I chose 12 additional blocks from the pile, looking for other kid prints and bright colors, and made 7 more from my own scraps.

The block pattern is a Disappearing Nine Patch, using 3.5 in. unfinished squares instead of the more usual charm squares.  Because the pieces are turned after they are cut, it's a challenge to get any one way prints (like these dinos) all going the same way.  I had to figure it out and write down which way to turn the squares.  (I still messed it up a couple times lol.)  I do like this block, and may make it again sometime.

The blocks were a little wonky, so I had to trim them down to be the same size.  They would not have lined up properly if set side by side, so I added the narrow sashing. 

The backing is regular cotton, but was once made into a tablecloth at a girl scout camp.  A friend recently passed the tablecloths onto me to use as backing, and it has worked well.  They must not have used the tablecloths very much at all.  (I used another tablecloth on the back of the Jumping Jacks quilt I showed at the end of August.)

This is such a fun time of year for those of us who participate in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  It's time to start putting quilts together from the blocks we've made all year!  I am working on a couple, but I'm also still making blocks!

This week I made multicolor string blocks.  The colors are even brighter than this photo appears.

Pure chaos!  Wild and crazy.

Smaller pieces make up the Grocery Chain strips sewn on actual grocery receipts.

Still crazy!

These 3-D Flying Geese are a little calmer, thanks to the white background.

So now, am I done making RSC 2024 blocks?  Maybe!  How about you?

Last Sunday, Hubby and I went to the big quarterly flea market in Elkhorn.  It was perfect weather, just a lovely day.

Lots of beautiful quilts were displayed for sale.  Prices were reasonable for the most part.

None of them came home with me, although the rose quilt on the right was very tempting!  I'm no longer collecting quilts.  But I can still enjoy looking.

I found yet another cool block I might like to make!  I saw this in Serenity Quilt Shop in Kenosha Wisconsin recently.  They had kits made up for the blocks, too.  There were blocks with bright colors like this, and...

soft floral prints like this!  Hey, I have soft floral prints!  I keep telling myself I can't make EVERYTHING.  But I keep trying!

No photos of the grandsons this week, sorry.  They were sick two days, and not here very long after school otherwise.  Nothing serious, just the usual bugs kids get when school starts, and they're perfectly well now.  Next week they have a day off school, and we're going to make Halloween cookies and go to the apple orchard.

Thanks so much for reading!  Have a lovely week!

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy 

The Seersucker Quilt

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

The quilt guild I belong to does a lot of charity work.  We make quilts of all sizes, plus many other items like walker bags and wheelchair bags for nursing homes, bucket hats and port pillows for cancer patients, toiletry bags for foster children and unhoused people, flannel hearts for NICU babies, and recently book pillows for kids.  Because of this work people frequently give us fabric to make these items.  All kinds of fabric.  Including seersucker.

As you may know, seersucker is a light weight puckery fabric, meant to be worn in summer and/or hot climates.  It has gone in and out of fashion for more than a hundred years, and was originally made of 100% cotton, although now it's usually a blend.  Men's suits are still sometimes made of it.  I have had blouses and dresses of seersucker, and made dresses for my daughters with it when they were children.  Due to the puckered weave it doesn't need ironing.  By the way, the weird name comes from Persian for milk and sugar.  (Click HERE for the Wikipedia article.)

Can you make quilts from seersucker?  I had never thought of using seersucker to make a quilt until I saw a kit cut by our charity committee at a guild meeting.  It was for a baby quilt, which of course is right up my alley, so I decided to try it.  The squares were already cut, so I arranged them in identical vertical rows and offset every other row.

Then I trimmed off the top and bottom like this.  I didn't have any seersucker yardage for a border, and I wasn't sure about sewing anything else to it, so I left it like this.  The sewing was simple, and I didn't need to iron anything.

Here's the back, a regular 100% cotton print.  The batting is polyester.  I bound it with the same fabric.

I admit, I am a self-described cotton snob.  I was nervous about working with poly cotton, since some of them are flimsy and pill at the first washing, but the seersucker worked out okay.

And just look what was at the meeting this week--a kit cut from cute ocean-themed seersucker!  Yep, this one came home with me too.  I'm not worried about using it anymore, but I need to remember to turn down the iron temperature if I need to press.

I would LOVE to know if anybody else has made a seersucker quilt.  I don't think I've ever even seen one.

Aqua month progresses on!  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month had me pulling out  scraps to go with the parts department strips and rectangles this week.  

It was a good chance to use some Dr. Seuss fabric I've been saving.

More 3-D flying geese!

In other news, I attended a meeting of the Wisconsin Quilt Study Group last Saturday, held at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts in Cedarburg.

Our topic was white work quilts, which were amazing but sadly don't photograph well.  We always have show and tell of member's new acquisitions, and I snapped a photo of this amazing antique quilt.  Such tiny triangles, perfectly hand pieced, with lovely quilting!  The background is a light yellow, it's not showing up well on my monitor.  It dates to the 1930s or so.

These beautiful hollyhocks were on the museum grounds, with the old lambing shed behind them.

In even more other news, we had a birthday party this week.  Our eldest grandson turned 19!  He's the tall guy with the awesome hair, shown here with his family.  Buddy and Little Guy miss him now that he's moved into an apartment.  I can hardly believe how fast he's growing up.

At my age, years go by quickly anyway, but the summer just seems to zoom past!  How are we nearly to the end of July already?  

Have a lovely week, everyone!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday 

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap 

Cats and Dogs and Elephants, Oh My

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Hey!  Who's under this quilt?  I just finished it this morning!

Oh yeah, I forgot, Snicky has a side job as a quilt quality control inspector.  That is of course in addition to his regular jobs of holding down our laps and waking us up at 5:00 a.m.  He's a busy guy.
 

I got carried away making these Uneven Nine Patch blocks last year for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  This is the second small quilt from these, and it uses 30 blocks.  The first quilt used 20.  There are still 51 more blocks!  What on earth was I thinking?

All of the blocks I chose for this quilt have animal prints in the center square.  There are pets, like cats and dogs and rabbits, zoo animals, farm animals, insects, birds, fish, dinosaurs, and sea mammals.  The blocks alternate dark and light centers. 

There are even animals on the back!  You might recognize this as "country look" fabric from the 1980s/1990s.  It's good cotton fabric, and I'm happy to have found a use for it.

Now I'll get the quilt washed and donated to a children's charity.  And then figure out what to do with the rest of the blocks.

The RSC color for June is blue (any blue!) which is great for me because I have so many blue scraps.  I'm just getting started making June's blocks, but these 3-D flying geese are easy and fast so I did them first.

Catch up is still happening with pink blocks.  I didn't have very many pink crumbs, so I only made two of these strips sewn on grocery receipts.

I may not be a big fan of regular pink fabric (yet?), but I have always loved double pink reproduction prints.  These hexies and triangles are cut with the Accuquilt cutter and are fast to sew.  I'm starting to get anxious to see all the colors together in the quilt, with those white stars peeking out.

A couple of months ago, a lovely lady (who used to be my son's English teacher) contacted our quilt guild about a local charity called Ebony Vision.  They have mentoring programs and a free lending library, with special activities for children. (Click HERE for an article about the organization.) Of course that caught my attention as I'm a retired school librarian.  We made a couple of quilts for them to use as a fund raiser, and now we're making book pillows.  The pillow covers (as seen above) have a deep pocket for books, lapped back flaps for easy insert and removal of the pillow, and a handle for carrying.

Our goal is 40 pillow covers done by our next meeting.  The pillows to go inside have already been purchased.  I couldn't attend the sewing day at the guild, but the amazing Colleen dropped off two kits plus instructions.  Those are the blue and green ones.  I also made the other two from guild fabric plus my fabric.

I had to include this red fabric with dinos and books!

There was some non-sewing activity here this week.  Little Guy "graduated" from preschool!  With all the excitement we couldn't get him to hold up the certificate for the photo, but it was such fun seeing the program the kids put on, with lots of happy singing. 

All the kids told the teachers what they wanted to be when they grew up.  

Here's what Little Guy said:

Those big trucks are really exciting.  Plus the man who collects the garbage in our neighborhood is very friendly, so maybe that's what influenced his choice.  I just want him to be happy in his work, whatever it is.

Have a happy start to a new month, with time for things you love to do.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

 

Butterflies, Strings, Flying Geese, and Four Patches

 Welcome to Treadlestitches, and welcome to summer!

 The butterfly quilt top is finished at last!  I couldn't resist displaying it in our lilac bush.  All the rain we've had lately has made everything outside happy and lush.  The lilac smell is heavenly.

Here's a clothesline photo that shows the quilt a little better.  There was a breeze this morning when I was taking pictures, can you tell?  I tried to snap one during a lull.

This quilt was started years ago by a quilter associated with the church where our quilt guild meets.  The church ladies had several unfinished projects they asked us to complete and give to charity.  Here's what I started with:

There were also several yards of unbleached muslin.  I cut the big butterflies up to make the pieced butterfly's large wings, plus triangles for the pieced border.

The cotton gingham and the blue print border came from my vintage stash.  I enjoyed putting this together.  I'm not sure if I'll quilt it myself, or hand it off to the lovely long-arm quilters in the guild.  I'm thinking it could go to a local hospice or some other appropriate charity.

Meanwhile, I'm working on pink scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, aiming to finish up by the end of the month.

I didn't have a lot of pink strings, so there's not a lot of variety, but a lot of scraps were tidied up.

Then there were the 3D flying geese.  With only one seam they're quick to sew.  Several of these appear to be cupcake prints.  Wonder why those always catch my eye lol.

I love this happy little frog!

We went to a flea market last Sunday, and it was just a perfect day.  I saw this vintage quilt, and thought it was interesting.  I always like patterns that chain.  A closer look revealed that it was a double 4 patch, with the same white fabric in the 4 patches and the larger squares within the pieced blocks.  Hmm.  Wonder how many variations on 4 patches there are?

Here's another one, with 4 patches on point like square in a square.  This quilt was 100% polyester.  I grew up with polyester, I wasn't tempted to buy it, but collectors and museums are including them now.  Definitely part of quilt history.

 Little Guy wants to show you his mean face.  Try not to be scared!

He is ferocious!

It's Memorial Day on Monday here in the US, a time to remember family and friends who have passed away.  Today I'm thinking about my maternal grandmother.

This is Gran, holding my oldest daughter, her first great-grandchild.  She never liked having her picture taken (me either!), so we have fewer photos of her than we'd like.  I'm glad we have this one where she looks very happy.  I am so lucky and thankful to have had her in my life.

Happy Memorial Day, and have a wonderful week ahead.

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap