Strawberry Red

 Welcome to Treadlestitches, and welcome to July! 

The color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this month is red, which is absolutely the perfect color for July.  It's strawberry season here in Wisconsin!  It took me about an hour and a half to pick this these berries at a local farm last weekend.  They were made into two batches of strawberry jam plus a little left over to eat.

Time in the sewing room was mostly spent cutting, but I got a little piecing done too.  There were some red scraps in the big pile I've been cutting up, so I could add some new-to-me fabrics to the old favorites for this Bricks project.  Somehow I never seem to have enough red.
 

The panda print came from a scrap bag I got from a vendor at a quilt show.  I got the dragonfly fabric from a rummage sale.

Does this happen to you?  Often when I'm cutting up scraps I start thinking about new projects to make with them!  (Even though I already have a few (cough, cough) projects in progress already!)  These Buckeye Beauty blocks will be a (you guessed it!) baby quilt, this one with a nautical theme.

What about a summer theme, and a block I've always wanted to try?  The very boring name for this block is Mosaic #3.  It was first published in the Ladies Art Company catalog, but has been used in quilts since the 1800s.  Quilt author Judy Gauthier has a clever way to make it in her book Quilts for Scrap Lovers.  You know I LOVE clever ways to make blocks, so I tried it out and it worked perfectly!  The background fabric was a scrap from the big pile, and made me think about sipping iced tea and eating watermelon.  I already had the green bug print squares.  

I think this pattern will work well in my happy novelty scraps, and also in my 1800s reproduction prints.

Speaking of happy novelties, these happy blocks are ready to sew.  I'm using charm squares with light backgrounds in the centers and red prints as the frames.  These squares are so cute I just couldn't cut them up.  Now I don't have to!

The weather this year has been all over the place, but it seems to finally be settling down into hot, appropriate for summer.  We've been indoors a lot this week because of the smoke from the Canadian wild fires, but yesterday skies were clearer so we ventured outside.  Little Guy had fun playing in the water with elephants and hippos and all sorts of other toy animals.  I mostly sat in the shade with the aforementioned iced tea.

Buddy is excited about helping pick berries!  Our little strawberry patch is worth all the work of weeding it, and more.  This is one day's haul.  Sadly, the season is short, and will probably be over a week from now, so we have to enjoy it while we can.
 

Here's another way to enjoy it:  Strawberry Sherbet.  It's an easy recipe with ingredients we usually have on hand.

Strawberry Sherbet

2 cups washed, hulled and pureed strawberries

2 cups Low Fat Milk (I use 2%)

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoons lemon juice

Combine all ingredients, and process in an ice cream maker.  (I use a manual Donvier ice cream maker, fast and easy).

Makes about 1 quart.

Note:  When it's done, I freeze the sherbet in individual serving-sized plastic containers.  At dessert time, I put the sherbet in a microwave safe bowl and zap it for 20 seconds to soften it up.

Happy 4th of July to fellow Americans this week!  The antique quilt above is from the Ken Burns collection, which was on display at Quilt Expo last year.  
 

Have a good 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