Pastel Baby Quilt Top, Aqua Blocks, and Criss Cross Stars

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Hello, quilters!  It's a beautiful summer morning here, and I'm hanging out my pastel baby quilt top for a photo.

The blocks were made in June, which was pastel month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  Pastel colors didn't really fit with my usual bright-as-the-sun RSC blocks, but no worries, I could just make a pastel  quilt.  I chose the fabric above for the alternate blocks, and made the pieced blocks from my small stash of baby-friendly prints.

This one literally says "Baby"!

So does this one, plus "cutie pie" and "little sweet pea".

I had a few light prints with baby toys to add in.

Two of the prints had diaper pins on them!  The one is a vintage fabric.

These are the kind of diaper pins I used with my kids, way back in the 1980s.  Hey, moms, did you use cloth diapers too?  It was certainly cheaper than buying disposables.  But definitely messier lol.

The quilt will be donated to the Children's Advocacy Center in Milwaukee.  I'm not sure if I'll donate it as a top or quilt it myself.  The center serves foster children as young as 3 months.  Absolutely heartbreaking, but I'm glad the kids are getting help.

In other news, aqua blocks are getting made for July's RSC color.  This set is my Greek Cross blocks.

The cat fabric in the center of this block came from a quilt shop in Edinburgh, Scotland.  I call them my British kitties.  I only had a fat quarter of it, and I will be very sorry when it's used up.  But that's what's it's for, after all.

Equal time for dogs!  Good old American Scooby Doo is sniffing out crime in this print.  Or maybe just looking for Scooby Snacks?

More aqua RSC blocks!  These are my Whirlygigs, some in blue-ish aqua and some in greenish.  I'm showing two sets of RSC blocks this week, because I won't be posting next week.  My mom and nephew are coming to visit!  Mom hasn't been here in a while due to health issues, but she's doing great now and the family can't wait to see her.  My nephew is taking the ferry across the lake from Michigan.  It's going to be a good time, but no time for quilting and blogging.

In Progress

I'm still making Criss Cross Stars, a Lori Holt pattern.  (To see her YouTube tutorial, click HERE.)  For the squares in the center of the blocks, I'm using either multicolor prints or black background prints.  I have a lot of each of these, and I tend to forget about them.  My biggest problem was finding "calmer" backgrounds in my stash, but I finally got all the blocks cut at least.

About two weeks ago, Hubby and I went to the big flea market in Elkhorn, Wisconsin.  I didn't buy much (mostly fruits and vegetables at the produce stand) but I took a few quilt pictures.  I always love to see the old quilts...

...and the new ones!  Great scrap quilt, love the red!  Those skinny flying geese (do they have a special name?) as sashings are amazing.  Very dramatic!

This Little Guy can also be dramatic!  I got to spend more time with just him the last two weeks while his brother was at wrestling camp.  The new Toy Story movie came out, and he wanted to make this version of Forkie after he found a red pipe cleaner.  We improvised with what we had here.  True to the movie, Forkie jumped in the trash a couple of times, but was rescued.  A happy ending.

I hope you're having a happy ending or beginning to this week!  Happy Quilting!

See you on July 25th!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these terrific ladies:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Friendship Stars, Pastel Blocks, and Oklahoma

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Here's what's happening this week.

The little Friendship Star quilt has moved from In Progress to done.  I was so glad to use up a handful of leftover hsts to make the star points.

The alternate blocks are made of a cute construction print.  I bought it from the Sew Our Stash shop at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts.  It was part of an unfinished kit that someone had donated.  (Thanks, unknown donor!)

The center squares and light squares were supplied by my "parts department".  I can't imagine running out of 2.5 in. squares ever by the way.  How about you?

There's a narrow inner border of red solid, and a larger border of the construction fabric.

For the back, I used this print from my stash, with words like beep and vroom and rumble rumble.  I was planning to use the red solid for the binding, but I made a miscut and didn't have enough, so the red print had to do.

The quilt will be donated to the Children's Advocacy Center in Milwaukee.

Just by chance I even had a pastel blue star.  Pastels are our colors of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  On it!

In Progress:  Pastel Baby Quilt

As you might guess from this blog, I love bright colors, and that's what I have the most of in my stash and scraps.  But I do have a small bin of "baby" fabric scraps in pastel shades of blue, green, aqua, and 

yellow.  I also had some strips of 1.5 in. light prints to go with them to make blocks like this.

So, now I'm making a baby quilt!  I'll make some blocks every week, and try to get the top done by the end of the month.  These scraps deserve to come out and play too.

The block is just an uneven nine patch.  

Here's the recipe:

Cut four 3.5 in. squares from a pastel print.

Cut four 1.5 in. x 3.5 in. rectangles from a light print.

Cut one 1.5 in. x 1.5 in. square from a pastel print.

Sew as for a nine patch.

In other news, I'm in Oklahoma, visiting my mom.   This is Mom, posing with our buffalo statue friend.  We were visiting the Oklahoma History Center.  We had such a good time!  The highlight was the exhibit about the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! which we both had always loved.  Visitors are even encouraged to sing along with the theme song.  Which we did, of course!

The History Center museum gift store had a section of books for only $2.00 each, which of course drew me like a magnet.  I bought the little book above about Woody Guthrie and I'm enjoying reading it.

Buddy and Little Guy are having lots of fun going swimming and playing in the park.  My daughter sent me this picture of her boys, and told me they are missing me.  I'm missing them too!  I will see them soon.

I hope you're feeling well and having a good week, doing all the things you love to do.  Like quilting!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Baby Quilts and Green Strings

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It might be too much to say we're snowed in here this weekend, but my husband had to siphon gas out of the car to keep running the snow blower, so he could unblock the driveway and get out to buy more gas!  At least we have power, plus plenty of food, books, and quilt projects.

These little quilts are ready to be donated to the Community Baby Shower going on here this month.  Both are from kits I cut last year from my flannel scraps and yardage.  The pattern is Rail Stepper, by Alycia of alyciaquilts.blogspot.com.  (Click HERE for the link to the free pattern.)  Thanks, Alycia!

Many of the scraps in the pink/purple/yellow quilt are left over from a big quilt I made for my granddaughter years ago.

You can see the block here in the corner.  There are 3 rails (the pink and purple rectangles) plus a longer white print on the left.  All the pieces can be cut from 3.5 in. strips.  I quilted it in a 3 in. grid.  BTW, my favorite print is the purple queen cat at the top.

The back was also left over from my granddaughter's quilt.

It was so nice to have these kits ready to go!  There are only 20 blocks in each quilt and the sewing is easy.

The back of the blue/green quilt was a remnant from the fabric store.

What's better than finishing projects?  Starting new ones!  January is always fun for me, despite the weather, because I'm planning out RSC quilts for the year.  It is possible to fall down a "sequential vortex" though.

I started here this week.  I have a little bin on my cutting table for snippets left over when cutting pieces.  Over a year ago, I saw Janine-Marie of Quilts from the Little House Blog sewing crumbs like these onto adding machine tape, and decided to do that with this year's grocery receipts.  (Click HERE for her year-end post with the strips, scroll down.  Hers are MUCH nicer than mine!)  The top strip is from last week, and the bottom strip is this week's.  Weird how they're nearly the same length even though I didn't cut them, and I didn't buy exactly the same items.  

That started me thinking about this basket full of strings.  Maybe there were some short strings I could use for the grocery strips.  That required sorting.

Sorting is kind of fun.  Now the strings are separated by color.  And I did find some short green strings.

More than that, I started another new RSC project:  string quilts!  I'm sewing the green strings onto a cloth foundation, and using leftover green triangles for the corners.

Here's what I've got so far.  The sewing is fun, and I love "recycling" these skinny scraps.  I don't know how many blocks I'll make, I'll just keep going until the strips are gone or there's not enough variety.  I'm having so much fun with this that I'm making up a parody song to Greensleeves (oh, green strings were all my joy and green strings all my delight..).

The green scraps are a happy contrast with all the snow outside.  We got somewhere around 10 inches just in the last two days.  It's finally stopped snowing (hurray!) but I might still stay inside today and sew.  How about you?

Stay warm, and thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Let's go virtually visiting!  I'm linking up with these ladies today.

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

 

 

A Baker's Dozen

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Here's my final update of quilts made for Hands 2 Help 2023.

The number 13 is often seen as Bad Luck.  There are airplanes with no row 13, and hotels and even office buildings that skip from floor 12 to floor 14 just to avoid complaints.  But no one complains about a baker's dozen.  It's basically buy 12-get 1 free for baked goods.  It seems to me an extra muffin or cookie is good luck!

This year, I have made a baker's dozen small quilts for Hands 2 Help 2023.  I had plans to send these to charities on the H2H list, but ended up donating them locally in conjunction with a project of my quilt group. They are going (or have already gone!) to Project Linus locally, to comfort kids in tough situations.  You may have seen most of these before.  They are in chronological order, by when they were finished.

1.  Red Dinosaur 4 Patch, 38 in. x 45 in.

2.  Dinosaurs Around the World, 40.5 in. x 40.5 in.

3.  Gum Wrapper Twist, 44 in. x 44 in.

4.  Pink Stepper, 36 in. x 42 in.

5.  Pink Nine Patch, 36 in. x 42 in.

6.  Little Bricks, 36 in. x 42 in.

7.  Pink Uneven Nine Patch, 40 in. x 48 in.

8.  Kaye Wood style Reversible Quilt, 37 in. x 41 in.

9.  I Spy Charm Squares, 38 in. x 49 in.

10.  Hour Glass 4 Patch, 36 in. x 43.5 in.

11.  My John Deere 4 Patch, 38 in. x 44 in.

 I just finished these last 2 this morning (nothing like the last minute!), so I'm including a couple of photos each.

12.  Tumbler Leftovers, 40 in. x 40 in. 

Here's the back, a fun older print.

And finally,

13.  M & Ms 4 Patch, 38 in. x 43 in.

The back is a white/navy print, and I bound it with a solid red.

So that's it for H2H 2023!  Many thanks to Sarah for running it and encouraging us to share our quilts with others.  I can't wait to see all the wonderful quilts that are being donated.  Wonder how many we made this year?

Back to the Link Up!