A Baby Quilt, String Blocks, and a Fruitathon

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Today's quilt is brought to you by the color purple.  It's actually a kit cut by the lovely ladies at my quilt guild from donated fabric.  I guess you could call it a charm square quilt, since all the squares are cut at 5 inches.  It will be donated to a child.
 

The focus fabric is this one with the children.  Aren't these kids cute?  It's an Easter print.  The kids are dressed up, and holding bunnies (real and chocolate), baskets of eggs, ducks, plates of cookies, etc.  There is even a kid in a duckie costume.

The raspberry pink binding fabric was originally intended as the border.  I added a light purple border with hearts and vines instead, and used the pink for the binding.

On the back is this cupcake fabric, plus a strip of the light purple hearts and vines print to make it wide enough.  I got the cupcake fabric at the museum sale (blogged about last week), and it's already come in handy.

Blue month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge had me making string blocks this week.  I really LOVE making string blocks!  They go fast, look cute, and use up scraps that wouldn't work for anything else.

I still have this much left, so more string squares are in my future.  I'm piecing my blocks on cloth foundations and they finish at 6 in.x 6 in.

A good hot iron is essential when piecing any quilt blocks, but especially ones like strings that need to be pressed often.  I have had lots of trouble with irons in the past (can you relate?).  One brand new one didn't even last two weeks!  I bought this one at a big rummage sale about a month ago, just as a back up.  It's a Sunbeam Ironmaster, and it must be old since it was made in the U.S.  The volunteers at the sale had marked it with a Tested label, which meant it worked, so I took a chance and bought it for $1.  

I am THRILLED with it!  And I never say that about an iron.  It gets beautifully hot, doesn't shut off, and glides across the seams.  I hope it doesn't quit on me, but even if it does I've already got more than my money's worth out of it.

One more rainbow kitty block happened!  I just can't stop making them.
 

In other news, it's been a fruitful week.

On Tuesday, I went to the U-Pick farm and picked all these lovely strawberries.  We've had more rain than usual this year, which affected the crop some.  The berries were plentiful, but there were also lots of rotten ones.

A nice lady at the strawberry patch told me about a truck at the local Fleet Farm selling peaches from Georgia.  So of course I bought a box on the way home.  According to the instructions, the peaches should be laid out like this for a couple of days until they are soft.  It took up half the kitchen table, but we worked around them (all of us love fresh peaches).  By Friday they were lovely and ripe, and easy to peel.  

I have been canning for days.  I got three batches of jam from the strawberries, plus 3 pints of berries in the freezer, plenty to eat, and two batches of strawberry sherbet.  The peaches turned into 12 pints canned, 2 quarts in the freezer, plenty to eat, and enough to make a small batch of peach jam later today.

Now that the fruit-a-thon is almost over, I can get back to quilting! 

A couple of weeks ago, my hubby took a 20 mile hike sponsored by a local group.  It rained all day that Saturday and they hiked through mud, but he persevered.  When this guy sets a goal, he meets it!  This photo was taken by a professional photographer hired by the group.
 

Have a lovely week!  I hope you have time for all the things you love to do.

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

Dancing the Two Step

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for visiting!

This week I finished a little Two Step quilt.  The free pattern is from Missouri Star.  (Click HERE for the video.)

The pattern title made me think of my Dad, teaching me to two step when I was a young teenager.  He was a good dancer.  It was fun to watch him polka with my mom, both of them laughing.

The blocks are simple, just one charm square (the one with wild dots), two short rectangles 2.5 in. x 5 in., and two long rectangles 2.5 in. x 9 in.  The blocks finish at 8.5 in. square.

Cutting was fast and easy.  I have a box of 2.5 x 5 in. rectangles, and I pulled from that for the short ones.  I cut the longer rectangles as I was processing scraps, and filled in from the 2.5 in. strips.  That left only the charm squares to cut.  I didn't repeat any of the fabrics in the blocks, except for the wild dots of course.  The border is a Toy Story print, left over from another quilt.

The hard part was setting the blocks together!  Jenny kind of hurries that part at the end of the video, and I really didn't get what she was talking about.  I had to play with the blocks for a long time to figure out how best to set them.  Not sure if I got that right yet, but moving on!

The back is more of the subtle butterfly print on white, and I bound it with a solid aqua.  I'm enjoying using solid colors for binding, especially with these wild colored quilts.
 

To make the back wide enough, I added this strip of frog print down the middle.  I got this scrap at a yard sale last summer, and it's just too pretty to cut into small pieces.  (Skies are gloomy here today, it's hard to get the right light for photos, sorry.  The background really is white, I promise.)

It's nice to find a good use for this fabric.  The quilt will be donated to a children's charity.

This week I started working on some baby quilts.  How is that any different than any other week, you may ask.  Most of my quilts are definitely baby-sized, but are intended more for toddlers, who enjoy looking at all the fun animals etc. in the prints.   These new quilts are meant for actual babies.  Here in the Milwaukee area, local TV station anchor Susan Kim and Waterstone Bank are again hosting a Community Baby Shower in January.  (Click HERE for information.)  Last year was the first year I contributed anything.  This year I wanted to start earlier.

This little top was one of those DrEAMI quilts--Drop Everything And Make It!  I had a pack of charm squares I bought when visiting a quilt shop with a friend (hi, Debbie!) and I added in some stash squares.

These elephants are so sweet!  

I've seen pictures of quilts like this online for years, usually with plain white strips in between the squares, but I wanted to use the footprint print.  I don't have the quilt pattern, I just figured it out (And did the math!  And it actually worked!).  If anybody knows the original designer, I'd be happy to give them credit.

It's 36 in. square without a border.  I'm trying to decide if I should add a border or just finish it as it is.  Back in the day it would have been a good candidate for Jack's Basket, but they don't accept quilts this size anymore. 

Something weird has been happening.  Every morning, Hubby and I find one of these red candles out of its holder.  We figure it must be Snicky the cat, but there are no teeth or claw marks on the candle.  Just a curious case of the cat in the night.

No photos of the little boys this week, sorry.  Little Guy has had a bad cold, and been home from preschool all week.  He's feeling better aside from a cough.  We're trying to get him healthy for Christmas.
 

Speaking of the Holidays, Christmas stress is real!  We're shopping and hiding presents and hoping we haven't forgotten anything.  I bought some new wrapping paper the other day, and it was hard to choose from all the cute ones.  I wish they made these in fabric!

Have a good week, whatever you're up to!  Happy Holidays to all who celebrate, and happy quilting to everyone!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap