Treadlestitches: animal prints

Saturday, July 26, 2025

Lions and Tigers and Bears and Purple

Welcome to Treadlestitches! Thanks for stopping by!

It's a rainy day, so no outside photos, sorry.

At last, a finished quilt! By some miracle, I got a little extra time this week. Mrs. Pfaff and I made short work of this little 40 in. x 48 in. Happy Blocks quilt.

I showed the top on the blog back in March. It was waiting for quilting when Mrs. Pfaff had to go into the shop. In my head I'm calling it Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My.

The pieces in the center of the Happy Blocks are animal prints cut from panels and striped fabrics, and bordered by solid colored scraps. The squares were cut at 4.5 in., and the outside strips at 2.5 in. wide, making blocks that finished at 8 in. square.

I'm donating this quilt to the Children's Advocacy Center in Milwaukee. In my experience, most kids love animals, so I hope an animal quilt can brighten a child's day.

Wait, we've got a moose, a skunk, an elephant, birds, butterflies, etc., but where are the lions?

Here they are, on the back! Along with zebras, giraffes, more elephants, turtles, and even more tigers!

I bought this fabric at a second hand sale, and it fit perfectly for the back. The copyright on the selvedge is 1998. Older cotton fabrics (in good condition!) can be great for backing, since they are usually 2 to 3 inches wider than today's fabric.

It's hard to believe this is the last Saturday in July. The summer is speeding past! I had to push hard to get my purple blocks done for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, since I know I won't have much time next week.

Sisters Choice is first, just five blocks, but with lots of purple scraps.

Next are the heart blocks. I was surprised I had so many different shades of purple in the scraps.

There are TWO ghost print blocks. The one on the upper left came from the box my friend gave me two weeks ago. I'm already working on those scraps, Joey! I just need to sew faster!

My favorite block this week is one of those prints that looks purple with blue fabrics and blue with purple. I call them chameleons. It's a cat print, I think it's by the late Laurel Burch. It won't matter what color it reads when it ends up in a scrap quilt.

I did get the peaches canned last Saturday. We also had peach crisp and some for eating. I already had peach jam from last year, so I didn't bother with it.

Yesterday we met our oldest daughter and her kids at a lake. The boys would hardly get out of the water, even for lunch!

Buddy was looking for fish. There were some very tiny ones. He was too busy to pose.

All of us are well here, and I hope you are the same. Have a lovely week!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Saturday, June 1, 2024

Cats and Dogs and Elephants, Oh My

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Hey! Who's under this quilt? I just finished it this morning!

Oh yeah, I forgot, Snicky has a side job as a quilt quality control inspector. That is of course in addition to his regular jobs of holding down our laps and waking us up at 5:00 a.m. He's a busy guy.

I got carried away making these Uneven Nine Patch blocks last year for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. This is the second small quilt from these, and it uses 30 blocks. The first quilt used 20. There are still 51 more blocks! What on earth was I thinking?

All of the blocks I chose for this quilt have animal prints in the center square. There are pets, like cats and dogs and rabbits, zoo animals, farm animals, insects, birds, fish, dinosaurs, and sea mammals. The blocks alternate dark and light centers.

There are even animals on the back! You might recognize this as "country look" fabric from the 1980s/1990s. It's good cotton fabric, and I'm happy to have found a use for it.

Now I'll get the quilt washed and donated to a children's charity. And then figure out what to do with the rest of the blocks.

The RSC color for June is blue (any blue!) which is great for me because I have so many blue scraps. I'm just getting started making June's blocks, but these 3-D flying geese are easy and fast so I did them first.

Catch up is still happening with pink blocks. I didn't have very many pink crumbs, so I only made two of these strips sewn on grocery receipts.

I may not be a big fan of regular pink fabric (yet?), but I have always loved double pink reproduction prints. These hexies and triangles are cut with the Accuquilt cutter and are fast to sew. I'm starting to get anxious to see all the colors together in the quilt, with those white stars peeking out.

A couple of months ago, a lovely lady (who used to be my son's English teacher) contacted our quilt guild about a local charity called Ebony Vision. They have mentoring programs and a free lending library, with special activities for children. (Click HERE for an article about the organization.) Of course that caught my attention as I'm a retired school librarian. We made a couple of quilts for them to use as a fund raiser, and now we're making book pillows. The pillow covers (as seen above) have a deep pocket for books, lapped back flaps for easy insert and removal of the pillow, and a handle for carrying.

Our goal is 40 pillow covers done by our next meeting. The pillows to go inside have already been purchased. I couldn't attend the sewing day at the guild, but the amazing Colleen dropped off two kits plus instructions. Those are the blue and green ones. I also made the other two from guild fabric plus my fabric.

I had to include this red fabric with dinos and books!

There was some non-sewing activity here this week. Little Guy "graduated" from preschool! With all the excitement we couldn't get him to hold up the certificate for the photo, but it was such fun seeing the program the kids put on, with lots of happy singing.

All the kids told the teachers what they wanted to be when they grew up.

Here's what Little Guy said:

Those big trucks are really exciting. Plus the man who collects the garbage in our neighborhood is very friendly, so maybe that's what influenced his choice. I just want him to be happy in his work, whatever it is.

Have a happy start to a new month, with time for things you love to do.