Kid Stuff and Bright Blocks on a Rainy Morning

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

This quilt was supposed to be the leaders and enders project while I worked on Criss Cross Stars.  It just took over.  Does this ever happen to you?  (If it looks like I shaded the blocks from dark to light it's just because it's a dark day and the light in this room is uneven.)

The pattern is simple.  It comes from the book Scrap Basket Surprises by Kim Brackett.  She calls it "Feedsacks" because she used 1930s reproduction fabrics to make hers.  I call my version Kid Stuff because so many of the fabrics are kid-friendly prints.

It might have a random look, but I can't do random (and I have tried!).  Each block has 8 long rectangles around a jelly bean print square.  I used 8 colors, one for each long rectangle (red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, light blue, dark blue, and purple).  There are also 4 short rectangles.  I chose them after I laid out the rest of the block.

The border is this triangles print.  It looks a little wild on its own, but calm next to the blocks!

Kid Stuff finishes at 54 in. x 68 in., and will be donated to the Children's Advocacy Center to be quilted and given to a child in foster care.

My blocks for Many Hands Many Hearts are done, and will go in the mail this week.  Above are the red/green ones...

then the orange and blue ones (love this combination!)...

and lastly the purple and yellow ones.  I definitely need more (and better!) yellows.  I'll dig around in the scraps and see what I can find this month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Speaking of purple, I guessed wrong on August's RSC color and made these crumb blocks as leaders and enders while setting the Kid Stuff top together.  Oops!  Never mind, I'll just save them for September and get started on yellow ones.

We are having an amazing summer!  We spent two days at a campground in central Wisconsin, and I just finally got all the laundry done!  Some of my favorite guys rode around on this golf cart.

Our two teenaged grand kids (Mr. H and Miss E) had fun on this crazy see saw at the playground.

When we got back home, Little Guy posed for me on the slide in the park near our house.  This summer will soon be over!  But we will try to make every minute count until then. 

I hope you're enjoying the season, whatever it is.  Happy Quilting!

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

Color Block Stars and Stack It Up

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Good morning and happy Saturday!  The Color Block Star top is done and hanging on the clothesline.  I added the border on Wednesday and the weather cooperated for a sunny photo yesterday.

It was really too big for the clothesline at 54 in. x 68 in.  Twelve inch blocks really add up!

 In addition to two of each of the "regular" colors I made two black blocks and two multicolor ones.  I forgot how many fun prints I had in black and multicolor.

I bought this colorful alphabet on the border at the museum sale.  I guess blue is my favorite border color.  I use other colors but I always go back to blue.  Do you have a favorite border color?

Every block has 15 print squares plus one white one.  That makes 300 squares, right?  So why do I still have a full box of 3.5 in. squares?  (Magic?)

The top will be donated to the Children's Advocacy Center in Milwaukee.

The Color Block Stars pattern is available for free HERE.  It was part of a block drive last year for Many Hands Many Hearts on the Oh Scrap blog.  (Thanks, Cynthia!)

  

Working on the top reminded me to get started on some blocks for the current MHMH block drive.  We're making these easy "potato chip-ish" blocks in complimentary colors.  I'm a little short on red and green prints (except for novelties of course!) but I had some orange/blue and yellow/purple to get started on.

Now for some pastels!  Well, mostly.  This time they're green, and they'll be part of the pastel baby quilt I hope to finish before the end of the month.

In Progress

As you can see, I'm treadling again!  My treadle is now in the dining room right under the window.  It's a good place to sew, especially when I'm waiting on supper to cook.  The jungle outside the window is a tangle of black raspberry vines, now with baby green raspberries ripening in the sun.

Once I finished the Color Block Stars top I went digging in the kits, block sets, etc. for the next project.  I chose a partial kit I cut a few weeks ago to make Stack It Up, a Lori Holt pattern.  

Last winter I really got into watching Lori Holt's videos on YouTube.  She has so many fun ideas for scrappy quilts.  Click HERE for the video for her 4 in. finished Stack It Up.  I wanted slightly bigger blocks, so I scaled mine up to 6 in. finished by cutting all the pieces from 2 in. strips.

So that's all the sewing news from our house.   But there is something even better than happened.

Our eldest daughter finished her Master's degree!  That's quite an accomplishment while working full time as a first grade teacher and looking after her husband and two teenagers.  We're very proud of her!

Have a good week, everyone, and thanks for reading this!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Back From Vacation, and Color Block Stars

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

We're back from our vacation in Edinburgh, Scotland.  It was a wonderful trip, but it is so good to be home.

Just walking down the streets of this modern but 900 year old town was amazing.  We took in lots of sights, including Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace.  In addition to all the historic wonders there were many textile things for a quilter to enjoy.

As is usual with us, we went to several museums.  In the National Museum of Scotland I saw a display about the color Turkey Red, which was often used in quilts of the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Above is a laboratory book recording experiments creating Turkey Red prints, from the United Turkey Red Co. Ltd., Dunbartonshire, Scotland, 1928-29.

 

They also had a Jacquard loom.  The pattern of the cloth woven on the loom was controlled by the punched cards, which are hanging in the background of the photo.  The weaving was done by hand (no electricity yet!).

Check out this sign!  It's a carved wooden likeness of a hand cranked sewing machine.  The shop it advertised sold hand made craft items.

Inspiration was everywhere, in tiled floors and brick houses as well as museum exhibits.

Plus there was an actual quilt shop!  There may have been another one too, but this was the only one I had time to go to.  It's called My Bearpaw.  It's a very small shop, with very kind and helpful ladies.

This is the fabric I bought and crammed into my already-stuffed suitcase.  Some of it is British made.  I bought a few fat quarters, a few fat eighths, and three scrap bundles.  I can hardly wait to start sewing with it!

I didn't take any quilt sewing with me, but I did knit these two hats to donate.  I'm trying to use up some of the yarn stash to make warm items for kids.  Winter is coming! 

After I got home, I made this Color Block Star for the current Many Hands and Many Hearts block drive, which will run through the end of November.  (Click HERE for details and directions.)  Because these quilts may go to anyone, I tried to choose squares that were calm prints, like florals and geometrics.  I made it in blue because we're finishing up blues for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

But I liked it so much I just had to make one with all novelty prints!  And I loved that so much I'm going to make a whole quilt from these!  I will make one block for the block drive and one for me in each color.

I did light blue next.  Calm first, then ...

novelty explosion!  This is so much fun!

Look who I found in the basement stash!  Little Lizzy must think I put those fat quarters there just for her.  Both cats were well looked after by family while we were gone, but have been keeping very close to us since we came back.  Guess they missed us!  We missed them, too.

I didn't always have internet while we were gone, so I have lots of quilt blog reading to catch up on.  Seems like a good way to spend the rest of this rainy day, while recovering from jet lag.

Have a wonderful week, everyone.  And happy quilting!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap