A Happy New Year

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Happy New Year!

The hardest thing about blogging for me is coming up with titles for my posts!  This week it was easy:  I took the title from this postcard.

One hundred and thirteen years ago, in 1911, my great grandmother sent this New Years card to her mother and father, my great great grandparents.  Here's the text of it:

Dear parents:  Thought I would send you a card telling you the mine buildings partly burned last night.  How is Pearl's foot?  Will and Richard aren't well.  

Bessie

Bessie turned 21 years old on December 28, the day before the card was posted.  She and her husband Will Risley had been married for 2 1/2 years, and their son Richard (my grandfather) was about 18 months old.  Pearl was Bessie's younger sister, 15 years old at the time.

Communication in rural Indiana was so different then than it is now.  It's unlikely that either family had a telephone, so letters and postcards were very important for sharing local news and family concerns.

Bessie was a quilter, and I am lucky enough to have some of her quilts.  I wonder if she sewed to keep her worries over Will and Richard and Pearl in check, or if she even had time with a sick toddler and husband to look after.

We had a lovely Christmas celebration this week, with food and presents and games.  And of course, the obligatory group photo.

Our oldest daughter made us some new picture ornaments for our tree.  The top two are her children, Mr. H and Miss E.  (Mr. H has since decided to cut his hair and looks much older.)  Somehow we didn't have an ornament with Little Guy's photo, so my daughter made one for him too.  Picture ornaments are always my favorites, even if they become tattered.

In spite of all the festivities, I actually finished a quilt!  That's because all I had to do was bind it lol, and I did that completely by machine.

The quilt was a Block of the Month by Barbara Brackman called Antebellum Album, which celebrated signature quilts made in the 1840s and 1850s by school girls, North and South.  It is free, and is still available online (Click HERE).

This was the first block, called Wandering Lover.  I started the quilt in late January 2018.  

It's not meant to be a Christmas quilt.  Red and green were very fashionable colors for quilts in this time period, and I had lots of the reproduction prints in my stash.

My friend Joey Mahieu quilted this one for me recently.  The main blocks have these wonderful feathered circles quilted on them, which were placed perfectly, as you can see in this block.  Ms. Brackman encouraged participants to write and draw in permanent ink on our blocks.  On this one, I wrote May the Circle Be Unbroken.

You can see more of Joey's beautiful quilting in the feathered border.  I love running my hands over it.

The backing is a wide back from Connecting Threads.  The binding is a green print that is also in the top.

I'm keeping this one, and I'll probably bring it out at Christmas just because of the colors.

Are you thinking about the upcoming New Year?  I'm trying to decide what to make for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.  

This is a problem I need to tackle.  It's my "Big Scraps" basket.  I define Big Scraps as those at least 6 in. wide but smaller than a fat quarter.  As I get big scraps, I bundle them up by color and stuff them into this bushel basket until needed.  I'm sure you tell it's getting out of hand.

This year I'm going to concentrate on using these big scraps to make RSC quilts.  I wonder how many quilts I can get out of this basket?

Now for something completely silly.

I bought a little waffle maker!  It was an impulse buy, for sure.  I was walking by it in the store.  It was adorable, and made cute little 4 in. waffles.  Not even expensive.  And they had purple ones!  It practically hopped in the cart.

Following the directions carefully, I made little waffles this morning, and they came out great!  The young grandsons will be here several days next week.  We'll see if they like waffles.

This year is coming to a close in just a few days.  As always, 2024 was a mix of good and bad times, joy and heartache.  Next year will probably be the same.  The joys make it worthwhile and help us weather the bad times.

I'm wishing joy for you in the coming week, and all next year.  Happy New Year!

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

  

A Golden Oldie

This is the story of a quilt.  It's the oldest UFO (unfinished object) that I have personally made. 

We're going all the way back to the spring of 1988, when I accidentally joined a Friendship quilt group at a large quilt guild.  I say accidentally, because I signed up for a machine piecing group that met in the evening, but due to low turnout it changed to a hand piecing group that met during the day.

If you were quilting back then, you probably remember the raging debate about hand vs. machine piecing and quilting.  (If you weren't, you might think that was insane, and you'd be right!)  Machine quilting was in its infancy, and machine quilted quilts were often not even allowed in quilt shows.  Completely ridiculous, of course, but a very stuffy crowd was in charge in those days. 

My first quilt teacher was Nedra Whittington, whose name appears on the block above.  In her class, we pieced and quilted by hand, so I had the skills needed for the Friendship group.

We met once a month (I think).  The organizer drew our names out of a hat, and assigned us a month when the others would make blocks for us.  When it was our turn, we brought already cut out pieces for our blocks (with the seam lines marked for hand piecing), and handed them out, two sets per person.   The finished blocks were due at the next meeting.

I was just starting to get into quilt history then, and this was my favorite book:  Remember Me:  Women and Their Friendship Quilts, by Linda Otto Lipsett.  Ms. Lipsett collected friendship quilts and researched their makers.

This was my favorite quilt in the book.  It's in the chapter entitled A Piece of Ellen's Quilt.  There are no patterns, but it was easy enough to draft.  The block is called Snowflake in the Ladies Art Company catalogs of the 1890s to the 1920s.  It has lots of other names, too.

I wanted to make a bed sized quilt, and I knew I wouldn't have enough blocks with just the ones from the Friendship exchange.  So I started making more blocks.

Friends not in the group made blocks for me, too!  This one was made by Elaine, a dear friend who shared my love of antique quilts.  Take a look at the print.

Above is a photo of the quilt in the book.  Elaine found a reproduction print of this fabric, and made her block with it!  The colors are different, but the print is the same.

My friend Nancy signed her block with the exact date, and a heart!

I had lots of extra blocks that needed signatures, so I carried them around with me and got other quilters to sign them.  The second red block above was signed by Maxine Young, owner of my favorite quilt shop, the Fabric Shack in Waynesville, Ohio.  (It's still going strong, and has a great online store, fabricshack.com.)

My grandmother signed this block.  It is especially precious to me now that she has passed away.

I love this one, too!  My oldest daughter had been doing some hand piecing and wanted to sign the quilt.  She picked out the colors, and did some of the stitching.  You might be able to see that she included our zip code with her signature.  She was 9 years old then.

So how did I let this become a UFO?  When the blocks were all finished, I hastily sewed them into a top.  It was very badly done, and I knew it, even at the time.  Diagonal sets are not my favorites, and I had used a striped sashing, which emphasized all the flaws.  I said a thing to myself that one should never say--"Oh, it'll quilt out."  No.  No, it won't.  After a few years I admitted to myself that the striped sashing would have to go.

A few months ago, I finally ripped the top apart, and this week I got it back together with different sashing and added a border.

This is more what I wanted when I started this project all those years ago. 

It's not a huge quilt, but it fits nicely on a twin-sized bed.

I'm so happy to have this much done!  All day I've been thinking of a line from Bookends, a Simon and Garfunkel song.

"Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you."

Little Buddy and I are yelling for joy around here!

I'm wishing you joy this week, in whatever you do.

Cheers 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

The Waiting Room

I have visited a few waiting rooms lately, while getting some routine appointments out of the way.  Most of them have been surprising comfortable, with magazines definitely younger than my children, and (mostly) music that doesn't make you want to jump off a building.  And I haven't really had to wait very long.  A couple of times I barely got settled before they called my name.

This is the quilt waiting room in my sewing room annex, aka the closet.  Some of these "patients" have been waiting a long, long time.

I usually don't let the guilt of UFOs get to me.  I tell myself this is my hobby, not my job, and I can go with the flow, piecing whatever takes my fancy.  But once in a while, common sense has to break through.

I can't use and enjoy ANY of these quilts, and neither can anybody else, until they are finished.

Maybe if I just get started, I could make a dent in this backlog.
So what about the baby quilts, and the small quilts?  I can easily quilt those myself on my Pfaff.
How many could there be?

There were TEN of them.  Seriously.  They're not even pictured above.  Almost all of them are donation quilts.
So first I finished this one:

It's a Chevron pattern, made with HSTs.

Here's a detail.  Some of these fabrics are from the yardage I used for tablecloths at my grandson's baby shower last April.

The back was more of the fabric from the shower.

Here's a closeup, kind of bleached out from the sunlight.  Each square has a zoo animal or two.  These fabrics can be hard to use on the front of the quilt because the printed lines are rarely straight, but it works nicely as a back.

I finished an almost identical quilt late last April.  I modified a pattern from the Moda Bakeshop, which you can find HERE.

One down, 9 to go.
You might need your sunglasses for the next one.

This red, blue, and yellow quilt has been hanging around the quilt waiting room for about a year.  I used a Quilts for Kids simple pattern which you can find HERE as a pdf.

The main fabric is this blue bug print, complete with realistic bugs.  I also found some other bug prints to go with it.  Most of these fabrics were purchased second hand.

I marked the quilting lines with soap, which worked well.  I quilted in the ditch between the blocks, and then did this diagonal grid over the top.

The back is a sports print.  This quilt will be donated to a child who likes sports and bugs.

So that leaves 8 more small quilts to finish.

I spray basted these 4 last night after supper.  Yes, that's more of the bug print on the bottom quilt, but it's a different quilt.  I think there is still more of that fabric in the basement.
These 4 will be the next to be quilted.

And then what?

And then these 4!  All four of these have a backing, but no batting.  When I get the first batch done, I'll cut all 4 battings at once from a large batt, and spray baste these little quilts.

I'm fired up now, and ready to get stuff quilted.  I don't know how long this mood will last, so I'd better get back to the machine.  I've got bobbins to wind and stitching to do.

And when I finish these, there are the (gulp!) big quilts!

Happy stitching!
Sylvia at Treadlestitches

I'm linking up with Myra at Busy Hands Quilts and Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts this week.

Treadle On Block Exchange Finish

Hurray!  I finished a UFO!  This one has been waiting for TEN YEARS.

The blocks for this one were three dimensional bow ties that finish at 8 in. square.  (Here's a link to a tutorial for making all sizes:  3D Bowties)

This project started from a block exchange on the Treadle On internet group in 2006.  All participants made their blocks on people-powered machines (treadles and hand cranks).   We signed our names on the blocks, and also included the kind of sewing machine used, with the approximate date the machine was made.  This exchange was also called the Pre-1900 block exchange, because we all used machines that dated to before 1900.  To make it even more pre-1900, the directions asked us all to use reproduction fabrics.  (Not everybody did, but whatever.)

Each set had 36 blocks in it.  I had 33 blocks from other Treadleonions (that's what we call ourselves) and 3 that I had made.  One of the blocks was too small, so I made a new block to replace it, and then made 6 more to bring the total up to 42.

I added a bricks border, made from 2.5 x 4.5 in. rectangles I've had in my scraps for a while.  Most of these were reproduction fabrics, but I wasn't too strict about it.  The outer border is a warm brown print I bought on sale at J. J. Stitches in Sun Prairie.

This was another quilt as you go project.  When the quilt is set block to block, I usually quilt in sections rather than by the block.  This quilt was small enough to quilt in two sections, leaving me with only one seam to do by hand on the back.  I did ditch quilting around each block, and outline quilting around the seams.  It was important to quilt down the 3D centers, so they wouldn't catch on things.
In order to have enough slack (technical term) to stitch the sections together, you can't quilt right up to the joining edges of the sections.  I leave at least an inch unquilted.

Here's how I join the sections.  I pull the backing and batting away from the seam, and pin it.  Then I pin the seam, and stitch it on the machine.

Here's what it looks like on the front after I seamed the two sections together.

Here's the back, pinned for hand stitching.  I used a plain unbleached muslin for the back this time, since I already had it and it was the right size.
Next I quilted the area near the joining seam that hadn't yet been quilted.
Lastly, I quilted the borders, and bound with a warm orange plaid.

Woo hoo!  Now it's washed and drying on the clothesline on this beautiful day.

We're heading into a special holiday weekend, with Independence Day on Monday.  I was inspired by Colleen of Piecemaker Quilts to make this little top:

Here's the link to her much better quilt:  Let's Pretend

As you can see, the main part of this quilt is a panel of Patriotic Teddy Bears.  I got this at the sale at the museum, sort of as a bonus.  It was in a bundle of other fabrics.

The USA panel at the top has been in my basement box of wonders for a long time.
I might quilt this myself, or hand it off to the long armers at the guild.  It will go to a child when it's finished.
To all American quilters, Happy Fourth of July!  To all quilters everywhere, happy quilting!

I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts this week.