Flying Geese, Radio Windmill blocks, and the End of the Summer

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

No outdoor photos today, sadly.  The sun is out, but so are the mosquitos.  Ever since the flood they've been getting worse, to the point that swarms of them descend on us just coming in from the car.  Apparently we live in a swamp now.  It even rained a little more last night.

Other than the pesky mosquitos I have very little to complain about.  Most mornings this week I was able to spend at least a half hour sewing before the grandsons arrived, which makes every day even better.  Part of my progress was finishing this little top.

I don't know the name of the block, and couldn't find it in Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.  If you know, please tell me!  I made the flying geese last year for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and made them into blocks earlier this month.  [Sara of My Sewing Room blog tells me the name is Night Vision, thanks, Sara!  Click HERE for a tutorial using more standard methods by Elaine Huff.]

This project was an experiment.  I came across the directions for the 3-D flying geese in Mary Ellen Hopkin's classic book, It's Okay If You Sit On My Quilt.  She called it Loose Goose.  (Click HERE for my first post on this.)  I wasn't sure what I would do with these geese, but I could practically hear Mary Ellen saying, "Go on, give it a try!"  So I did.

I have to say right now that I do not ever plan to make flying geese this way again.  

Here are my reasons.

1.  It's fiddly.  There is only one seam, which is dead easy, but then it needs to be carefully ironed to come out right.  It might help to have three hands when doing this.

2.  It adds bulk.  Just what we want, more bulk?  Take a look at the back of the quilt top.

3.  I mostly make quilts for kids, so this should have occurred to me, but the blocks being 3-D means loose flaps that might not hold up to multiple machine washings.  To fix this before I set the blocks into the quilt, I top stitched all the loose edges (the short sides of the triangles) down.   3-D which was meant to be a feature was now a bug that required extra work.

I like the look of the quilt, and I'm glad to be using up most of the blocks I made.  I don't regret trying something new, but it's not a technique I want to repeat.  Just my humble opinion, of course.

I do like this set!  There are six vertical rows, with five blocks and five sashings each.  The blocks are 6 in. finished and the quilt will finish at 42 in. x 48 in.  I will donate it to the Children's Advocacy Center.

I'm not sure what a Radio Windmill is, but my Radio Windmill blocks are done for the RSC for August.  These are the left-leaning ones.

And now the right leaning ones!  It was a challenge to find center squares.  I wanted light backgrounds with at least some aqua in the print.  The pieces on the outside helped me use up some of my aqua big scraps.

We had a good week here.  I'm especially happy about that because it was our last week with the kids before they go back to school.  Buddy invented a concoction he calls Sprinkle Pie.  It's a combination of plain yoghurt, blueberries, strawberries, a little sugar, and sprinkles.  He's very proud of it as you can see, and later made some more for his brother.

We went to Discovery World in Milwaukee yesterday, and it was wonderful.  Little Guy especially liked the Curious George section, which is huge.  

All these monkeys had a good time!  And so did I.  

Buddy loved the aquarium best, and even got to touch a ray and another fish.  Little Guy was not tall enough to reach the fish in the "touch me" tank, but later both boys got to gently touch a turtle.

We have had a good summer, but I can't say I'm sorry the fall is coming.  I still get to see the boys after school for an hour or two per day, and I'll have more time to do things besides babysitting.  Like quilting!

Have a wonderful week ahead, whatever you do.  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

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

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

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Angela at So Scrappy

Scrappy Sewing and Summer Memories

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Hello!  Lizzie would like to show you a quilt today.  I think she's gotten jealous of her brother Snicky being The Cat Who Poses on Quilts. 

Our finish is this Bright Hopes quilt.  I showed the top in May, but couldn't quilt it until Mrs. Pfaff came back from the shop.  It measures about 42 in. x 48 in., and will be donated to the Children's Advocacy Center for a child to take home.

About 2/3 of the rectangles in the quilt came from a bag of cut pieces donated to our guild by Mr. M, a gentleman who once managed a fabric store.  I supplied the rest from my "collection".  There were so many fun fabrics in the bag, like monkeys, Ritz crackers, parrots, and quite a few shamrocks for St. Patrick's day.

I think Mr. M might be a Cubs fan!  I still have lots of these rectangles left.  

This is the back.  It was not quite wide enough, so I sewed a strip in the middle.

Here's a closeup of the backing.  As you can see, I quilted a simple 2 in. grid over the blocks.  Take a look at the print.  Notice anything odd about the clothes on the line?

I bought the backing fabric second hand.  It just looked like clothes hanging on the clothesline to me until I looked at the selvedge, and saw the name.  Winter Gnomes?  Oh, the red things are gnome hats!  I didn't even notice before, just thought these were cute clothes.  I love fun fabrics like this.

June is almost over!  I had a little panic over that, and even though it was a busy week made time to finish my orange blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Thank goodness these Radio Windmill blocks are fast and easy.

Favorite blocks!

Orange monkey!

And whatever this is!  Maybe an orange bear?  From a cartoon?  You never know what you're going to find when buying second hand fabric.

Thank goodness I finished the Sisters Choice blocks last weekend.  Now I can start July all caught up.  Our color for July is PURPLE!  My favorite color!

My favorite block from this set uses some of the Halloween squares I got at the last guild meeting.

There goes Little Guy, driving again.  This time he's part of a program called Safety Town.  They learn about how to be safe in cars, on the bus, at the pool, etc.  They have fun field trips to the fire station and a vet's office and the police station.

Yesterday he graduated from the program.  His big Buddy was proud of him.  So were we!

I took a photo of this banner at the school where Safety Town is held.  Isn't it great?

Thursday morning while the boys were at their activities I picked strawberries at the local U Pick place.  Such a delicious part of summer!  I need to start taking the boys with me to pick, even though I know we won't get as much done.  It's good for kids to know where food comes from, and I have lots of good memories of picking with family.  

Do you have good summer memories?  I hope so.  And good winter ones too!  Have a wonderful week, everyone, and Happy Independence Day to all in the U.S.A.

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

Twin Tops and More Green Blocks

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

I'm back after technical difficulties last week.  A big storm here knocked out our internet and cable last Friday night, and we didn't get it back until Sunday.  Years ago that wouldn't have seemed like such a big deal, but we are so used to all these modern conveniences now that we really missed them.  It paid to have books to read from our wonderful local library.

We still had electricity, thank goodness, for light and heat and so I could use the iron while I pieced on the treadle.  Some of the leftover Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks from 2023 finally got made into tops.  The first one is the one above.

Twenty-four Puss in the Corner blocks went into this top, which is destined for a young person through the Child Advocacy Center in Milwaukee.  Sometimes I set these blocks side by side, which can look kind of chaotic.  This time I opted to separate them with light print sashing, which makes a calmer quilt.  Life right now seems chaotic enough all by itself.

The border and cornerstones are the same fabric.  It's a print from author Eric Carle's book The Very Lonely Firefly.  (Don't worry, the firefly finds friends in the end.)  The block in this corner is made from a Minecraft fabric scrap leftover from making a pillowcase for one of my grandsons.

Each block is made from 4 charm squares:  two each of the novelty print and two each of the light print.  (Click HERE for some quick instructions).

There were STILL more Puss in the Corner blocks, so I put 24 more of them into a second top with the same layout as the first one.  I had less of the light sashing print and the border, so both had to be cut a little narrower.

The cornerstones and border are green in this one, which goes along with our RSC color for May.  It will also be donated to the Child Advocacy Center, to be given to a young person.

The green border is a novelty print (of course!) of Dr. Seuss characters.  As a retired elementary school librarian I love prints from children's books.  (I have been known to squeal when I see them, which can be a bit embarrassing.)

Two of the blocks are also made from Dr. Seuss inspired fabric.  Like this one, with Thing One and Thing Two.  Sometimes my youngest grandsons remind me of these guys.

I only had a scrap of this Seuss fabric but I loved including it.  Lots of us old folks enjoy seeing the names of these books that livened up our childhood.

The very kind quilter who organizes these quilts will do the long arm quilting on my tops.  When Mrs. Pfaff is back from the shop I'll start sending finished quilts again.

Oops, May is almost over!  I've got to push on and get my green RSC blocks done.

Last week I had these Radio Windmill blocks ready to go.  These 5 lean to the right, ...

and these 5 lean to the left.  Can you believe that 3 out of the 10 have giraffes in the print?

I'm not sure which imaginary land has green and pink giraffes.

Alligator or crocodile?  This guy is more realistic.  But not very scary.

The hearts are this week's effort.  Of course there had to be a Green Bay Packers block.

Isn't it amazing how many shades of green there are?  The numbers print is another an Eric Carle fabric.

My favorite heart block!  Great color, fun print, a scrap from my friend Joey.  (Note to self:  Press it again!)

Only one more Saturday in May!  I hope I made some progress with the green scraps.  How did you do?

We had beautiful weather on Mothers Day.  After lunch we took a walk in the park.  The kids call this bench "the picture bench", so we posed for a group photo.  Not pictured:  our son, who was working, a son-in-law who wasn't feeling well, and Mr. H the camera shy teenager who took the picture.

Here's a scary sight:  Little Guy driving around on a four wheeler!  He's a good driver so far.

I hope you're enjoying the merry month of May where you are, whatever the weather brings.

Happy Stitching!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Check out these great linky parties, hosted by wonderful quilters.

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap