Showing posts with label Winter Quilt Show. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Winter Quilt Show. Show all posts

Friday, February 20, 2026

Many Hands Make Light Work, and a Scrap Tsunami

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

 
Technically, I managed to take an outdoor photo of this quilt now that it's finished.  The wind was terrible that day, it's a miracle I got to take it at all before the clothespins shot off the clothesline and I had to grab the quilt to keep it from falling.  Weird weather here lately.

Ah, that's better, safely inside.  You might remember this as a top I finished in December.  The charm squares were given to me by a friend at quilt guild.  I sewed them up, and added the border from stash.

Another friend, the Amazing Colleen, did the quilting on her long arm, and it turned out great!


Our guild supplied the batting and this colorful blue backing.  I did the binding, with pink binding also supplied by the guild and made by one of the members. 
Lots of us put our time and effort into finishing this quilt.  Many hands really do make light work!  It will be donated to the Children's Advocacy Center in Milwaukee.


 I didn't have a lot of time for sewing this week, but I am keeping up to date on my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.  These are the Whirlygigs, made using Preeti Harris' tutorial. (Click HERE).  One of these prints is an Easter print with Snoopy and Charlie Brown.  Lately I decided to just go ahead and use holiday prints on my scrap quilts.  It's all fabric, right?

Wonderful and fun things happened this week!  The Winter Quilt Show in West Bend last Saturday was a highlight.  One of the vendors had these antique sewing machines for sale.  They were calling to me, but I didn't weaken.  I still have several and enjoy getting them out from time to time.

These ladies were documenting a lovely crazy quilt from the 1880s.  It was in very good condition, with very little shattered silk.

This was my favorite quilt in the show!  The maker wrote about her immigrant grandparents in her artist's statement.


This little quilt is inspiring me to make something similar with novelty print squares.  I haven't figured out just what yet.

I might have bought some fabric at the show.  But none of it cost over $10 per yard!


In Progress

The Farm Quilt is coming along well.  All the blocks are finished and set together, ready for the borders.  I'm taking a little time to decide which fabrics to use.  I'm glad to have several good choices.

Meanwhile, the green crumbs and strings are spread out all over as I work on February's final RSC set.

But, scraps got me sidetracked!!!


Wednesday night was our monthly guild meeting.  This scrap tsunami was on one of the tables.  The scraps were donated to the guild by someone in the community.  Our guild has quite a large stash of fabric yardage, but we have no room for scraps. We were encouraged to TAKE SCRAPS HOME.  Any not taken would be donated elsewhere.  Woo Hoo!!!


Look at all the cool stuff I snagged!  Plus the Amazing Colleen brought me some too.


All I can say is, the scraps made me do it!  This is what I did this morning, instead of working on all the other quilts in progress.  The block on the left above was in the scrap tsunami.  I really liked it.  It's like a big Bright Hopes block.  All of a sudden I decided to make a quilt like this, but using a charm square for a center instead of the original 5.5 in. square.  (The charm squares are trying to burst out of their plastic shoebox.  Must use them up!)  My practice block is the one on the right.

I already had the new-to-me scraps out, so I cut all the rectangles I could from them.  I chose non-novelty prints for these, mostly geometrics, knowing I would use novelties for the centers.  The rest of the needed rectangles were cut from my parts department.

All I have to do now is choose charm squares, and I can start sewing this quilt as leaders and enders.

So that was my week.  How was yours?  I hope you had at least as much fun as I did!  

Take care, and happy quilting!

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:


Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap
















Friday, February 18, 2022

Chasing the Lights

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Don't you just love aqua?  Like lots of you, I've been cutting and sewing aqua scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this month.  Before the RSC, I seldom used aqua at all.  It's not exactly blue and not exactly green, and I just didn't really know what to do with it.  There are so many cute aqua prints though, and once I started making blocks with them, I was hooked! So now I enjoy adding them to my Rainbow quilts (and others!) every year.

Here's the aqua double row for the Razzle Dazzle quilt.  (Click HERE for the start of this quilt, with the red row.)

Some of the "usual suspects" are here--Scooby Doo, robots, etc., cut from 3.5 in. strips like the split nine patch blocks I made last month.

The light aqua triangle in the center of this photo is from a library print layer cake I won at a retreat.  It's printed to look like the old date stamps we used before computers, when we stamped cards and/or date slips with due dates.  My fingers used to get ink stained changing the date every morning.  I'm not sorry we left those days behind.

Razzle Dazzle takes an equal number of dark and light triangles.  The light fabrics are the hardest to find.  (By the way, a little green alien is waving at you!)  I'm always looking for more cute light prints.

Hey, I found some!  Last Saturday, I went to a quilt show for the first time in two years (!), and bought these lights from vendors.  Doing the happy dance!

The show is simply called the Winter Quilt Show, and is put on by the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts.  (Click HERE to see the winning quilts.  Note, you will have to scroll down a bit, past the entry info, etc.).  The quilts were amazing.  The entry form included a place for Quilt Story, where the makers could tell about their inspirations, how they made it, etc.  So many of them referenced the pandemic, and lots of them said they kept busy at home during lock downs by finishing projects.  (Can you relate?)

More lights, this time reproduction 1800s prints.  Just can't quit those repros, especially when they're blue and white.

I got lots more stuff, which may make it into a later post.  Basically I looked for cute fabrics with a good price, like always.  I even got Girl Scout cookies for hubby and me.

Back home again, I'm working on cutting up my light scraps from this basket of fabric trimmed from quilt backs.


 Plus I'm pulling in the Big Scraps in whites and creams for next month's RSC blocks.

Babysitting this week started out very sweet, with Little Buddy, Baby Buddy, and their teenaged brother (I'm calling him Big G) here on Monday.

The little boys were happiest when building roads and towers together.  (BTW, the tail in the foreground is a big plastic dinosaur).

Last Monday was Valentine's Day, so of course we made cookies.  I had to pull the plug on that activity when they started eating the cookie dough big time.  A taste, maybe that's okay, but not HANDFULS!  Later, when Baby Buddy was napping, Little Buddy and I did the decorating.  Guess which ones he did.  Hint--for him, too much is not enough.

It was a crazy week with kids' activities, plus Little Buddy caught the stomach flu that was going around in his kindergarten class, so not a lot of sewing got done, but there is this.

I pulled out a set of blocks from the "Some Assembly Required" basket, and I'm sewing them into rows.

Check out this cheeky monkey!  He knows he's not supposed to have a remote!  He's grinning at me, like saying "Look what I've got!"  I laughed and took his picture, definitely encouraging him.  (Oops!)  I hope all the channels aren't scrambled.

How was your week?  I hope it was fun, and filled with what you love to do.  

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy  

Cynthia at Oh Scrap