Sponge Bob Quilt, and a Little More Shopping

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Are you ready, kids?  I bet you can guess why I call this the Sponge Bob quilt!  This happy guy appears in 3 of the scrappy blocks and the border.

Most of the scraps, Sponge Bob and others, came from this pile given to me by the Amazing Colleen.

Some of the scraps were already cut into the right size for the middle of these Bricks blocks (3.5 in. x 6.5 in.).  It was easy to add the white pieces (cut 2 in. x 6.5 in.) to make 6 in. finished blocks.

I have made several donation quilts from this pattern.  This one measures 42 in. x 48 in. and will be donated to the Children's Advocacy Center in Milwaukee.

As usual, simple quilting finishes it off.

I used up almost all the Sponge Bob fabric with this strip on the back!  I love using scraps, and I really love using them up!  Don't worry, I have more lol.

On my way back from a family funeral, I stopped at Quilted Joy in Louisville, Kentucky.  It's a lovely shop, with very helpful staff.

Here's what I bought:  7 fat quarters, 3 fat eighths, and a jelly roll of rainbow striped strips.  I'm always looking for fun prints, especially in orange and purple, so I was glad to see the Halloween prints.  I have also been looking for rainbow print.  I have an idea I may use to put together some of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.

There was a big antique mall on the way home.  I was intrigued by the block in this antique quilt.

I loved this cute rail fence too.

Want to see something weird?  This is a rest area on I 65.  It looks more like a spaceship to me.  Or a modern Stonehenge?

The inside is also amazing.

I'm traveling again this week, going to visit my mom in Oklahoma.  I won't be quilting until I get back.  But there might be a little more shopping!

Have a good week, everyone, whatever you do.

Thanks for reading!

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Hot Wheels! Dare to Be Rad!

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

Yahoo, the grandkids are back in school, and I have more time for sewing!  I actually got a quilt finished this week.

Does this blue block explain the title?  It says Dare to be Rad! with the Hot Wheels symbol underneath.  Our quilt guild was given LOTS of Hot Wheels fabric scraps by a gentleman who once ran a fabric shop.  My friend The Amazing Colleen thought I would enjoy doing something with them, and of course she was right!

There are five different Hot Wheels prints, and two colorways of most.  To add more color and variety, I mixed in whatever car theme fabric I had, including wheels and tools, plus other vehicle prints.

The blocks are Bricks, with a center cut 3.5 in. x 6.5 in., and two outside pieces (in this case, dark blue) cut 2 in. x 6.5 in.  Easy and fun to make, and a good way to use the novelty prints I love.  The borders are a light blue Hot Wheels print.  They were already cut by the original owner.  All I had to do was trim them down and cut the right lengths.

The quilt is 46 in. x 52 in., so of course I had to piece the back.  Luckily I had another race car print, and some Tonka Truck print also donated by the same person.

Tiny little race cars print!  I have been looking for a home for this fabric for a long time.

Most of the quilting is my usual serpentine stitch grid, courtesy of Mrs. Pfaff, but I quilted parallel lines in the border to make a road for Hot Wheels type cars.  Vroom vroom!

These remind me of my brother.  He loved Hot Wheels cars, and used to always have one he was playing with, running it on the carpet or the couch or even on me while I was trying to read!

The blue fabric came from the sale at the museum last June.  There was one "regular" half yard or so piece, and 15 pieces cut into these weird triangles.  Long before I got to the binding, the triangles were all I had left, so I cut the binding from them.  For the binding I sewed together 13 short pieces.  Miraculously only one of the seams ended up in a corner.

I do have one question.  When did people stop saying things were "rad"?  1990s?  1980s?  Just how old is this fabric anyway?  It is in very good condition, so no worries there.

In other news, Colleen also gave me a scrap bag at our August guild meeting.   All the pieces were novelty prints!!!  This is the gallon bag dumped out on a table.

And this is all the pieces from the bag cut into either strips, squares or rectangles.  I just couldn't wait to start sewing some of these up.

Lots of the pieces were 6.5 in. long, and 4 or so inches wide.  I trimmed them to 3.5 x 6.5, just like the Hot Wheels fabrics, and made bricks with white sides.  I made 22 of these blocks from the new scrap bag pieces.  I'm adding in leftover bricks from the Hot Wheels quilt plus a few other stray rectangles to make the 42 I need for a new bricks quilt.

It is dangerous to give me new-to-me scraps and more time to sew.  I will definitely start new projects! I was watching a YouTube video from Merry Mabel Market about making half log cabin blocks from random scraps.  (By the way, I'm loving her videos!) I can't do random, but it did start me thinking about how cute half log cabin blocks would be made from these new scraps.  I drew up this block to use 2.5 in. strips.  

My blocks start with a 3.5 in. square, and each "round" is two strips 2.5 in. wide, in the same color.   I mixed the new scraps with my strips on hand.  The blocks are 9 in. finished, and I love them!  If I can stand to wait until January (iffy) I will make these for next year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

This year's RSC is almost over!  I finished the August aqua blocks, and it will soon be time to start setting this year's blocks together.  These are the Thrifty ones.

This is my favorite block this week!  The cat in the middle looks properly smug, crazy minions are popping up in the corner, and that yellow fish has a cheeky grin!

I'm going to go find my own properly smug cats for a cuddle or two, and then get some lunch.  Have a happy quilty week, everyone!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these fabulous link party hostesses:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

 

Bricks and Bananas

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Finally, this quilt is out of the problem pile and done!  I pieced it at least a month ago from bricks blocks I made as part of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge last year.  Then I layered it, basted it, and started quilting.  Turns out my basting was very very bad, causing tucks and other unspeakable faults.  So I pulled out the quilting I had done, took the quilt apart (sigh), and started over.  You gotta do what you gotta do.

Check out the border--it's bananas.  Literally, a print of bananas on blue that looks like denim.  I'm so happy I still have some of this fun fabric.
 

This is the 4th and last Bricks quilt, and at 48 in. x 54 in. it's the biggest one.  I'm hoping to donate it to Quilts Beyond Borders.  I think I followed all the rules, but I'll check with them to make sure.

It was fun making these blocks last year.  Especially since each one only has two seams!  I'm going to keep this pattern in mind to use again.  The free pattern is called Forest Bricks, and comes from Marysquilts.com, click HERE.

The back is this red plaid from the stash, and the binding is the same fabric I used for the dark blue in last week's Lightning Streak quilt. 

There are a few more projects in the problem pile, but at least one is now problem-free.

 The purple 3-D flying geese are done.  I'm realizing how small they are (finishing at 2 in. x 4 in.) and how many I'll need for finished quilts, so I'm making lots of them.  These are easy too, just one seam.

More cats!  I keep finding more cute fabric to make into pieced cats.  I am inspired by some stuffed cats my grandkids have, called Cats Vs. Pickles (Click HERE to go to their web page.)  These cute little cats are all different colors and are soft and snuggly.  Even the pickles are cute.

When I bought the fabric for the green cat above, I thought the print was shamrocks, which would be fun for St. Patrick's Day on Sunday.  (In my defense, I snagged it out of a sale bin at a crowded quilt show and didn't get a good look.  I needed green anyway.)  It's still a cute cat, and I'll add it in with January's other green kitties.

Our guild's block of the month is this Pineapple Block, seen here made up in my yellow scraps.  I wonder what a whole quilt of pineapples would look like?  Hmm, or maybe lots of other tropical blocks?

Here's Buddy, putting a real pineapple on his head because the Minions do (?)  Or just because he's being goofy.  We all love fresh pineapple, and it was on sale this week at the grocery, so why not.
 

These little guys have just discovered video games, oh dear.  Their dad and uncle play online, and they get to watch.  Here they're pretending to be heroic characters.  Buddy and Little Guy have also been playing Mario Cart on the weekends.  They can hardly wait for Friday.

We've had some warm days this week.  It's a joy to go to the park with my Little Guy.  He was pretending to be a super hero, and told me we needed to "vacuum the city".  It took me a minute to get it.  "Do you mean evacuate the city?"  He nodded.  We got all the pretend people out, and he learned a new word.

I hope you are all having fun, and NOT vacuuming cities, unless you want to of course.  I'm wishing you a Happy St. Patrick's Day on Sunday, and a wonderful week ahead.

Thanks for reading!

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at SoScrappy

 

With A Little Help From My Friends

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

More bricks today!  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge just keeps giving.  I finally have all the Bricks blocks from last year sewn into tops.  Just one more top to quilt (next week?  Maybe!).  

This one is made from just pink and purple bricks.

As you can see, we got some blue skies and sunshine this week, which I am so grateful for.  There is still a lot of winter left, of course, but the sunshine makes everything better.

The Bricks blocks are a great place for fun novelty fabrics.  I think the Valentine dogs print came from a batch of scraps my friend Debby O. sent a while back.

Check out these exotic-looking tigers!  They came from the stash of the amazing Preeti Harris at Sew Preeti Quilts (Click HERE) as a prize for making a Positivity Quilt.

This llama fabric is my favorite!  I was grumbling a little about not having many pink scraps, and my friend Joey sent me a whole bag of them!

Here's the back, with lots of sweet bunnies!  This big piece was in an overflowing basket of mostly novelty print scraps given to me by the lovely ladies in our quilt guild.

Red is our color of the month for the RSC, and there are so many great fabrics!  Have you ever seen anything cuter than these little ninjas?  This fabric came from my friend Debbie C. in Madison.
 

Here it is with the rest of the red Stretched Stars blocks.

A few red rail fence blocks happened this week too.

I have met so many wonderful, fun, kind, sharing people through quilting!  I'll bet you have, too.  Their friendship is like sunshine in winter.

Here's more sunshine!  My youngest grandson Little Guy is playing with trains in the children's section of the library.  We had a great morning, and brought home almost more books than I could carry.  Our cozy reading time after lunch is a highlight of the day for both of us.

Happy Valentine's Day this coming Wednesday to all who celebrate.  And Happy Gal-entines Day, too!  Love and friendship is worth celebrating.

Thanks 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

 

Bricks and Blocks and Frankenbatting

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for visiting!

It's another gray Saturday today, just normal for winter here, so I apologize in advance for the photos.  At least the snow is finally melting!  I finished this Bricks quilt this week, made from 2023 Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.

The blocks were fun to make all last year, and great for any kind of prints, including novelties.  I have two more bricks tops ready to quilt.  I was inspired to make these by Sara at the My Sewing Room blog.  (Click HERE.)  Thanks, Sara!

This is the backing, lots and lots of colorful dots.  The binding is more of my solid color "big scraps" that I'm using up.

Here's the border, a puzzle print.  I like using multicolor fabrics on the borders of bright scrap quilts.

Plus, we really love jigsaw puzzles around here!  I like to have one in progress on the kitchen table.  Hubby and I can work on it when time permits, and Buddy is pretty good at putting pieces in.  He has sharp eyes.

We finished this one after Christmas.  Hubby gets absolutely obsessed.

I loved getting out the red scraps for February's RSC color of the month.  They're bright even on a dull day.  So far I'm only making 4 of these Potato Chip blocks in each color, but more could happen.

The 3-D Flying Geese are so fast to make.  Still not sure what I'm doing with them.

I've been trying to straighten up my quilt supplies storage in the basement.  I'm basically a student of the Sloth method of tidying up (very, very slowly), but some stuff is glaringly obvious and needs help right now.

Like this pile of batting scraps.

I'm a long time quilter and kind of a miser about quilt stuff, and I've saved batting scraps of all sizes for years.  It's finally started breaking out of the bin and laundry basket, and I have to pass it every time I go down there.  I was inspired to finally deal with it by Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, who tackled her own batting scrap oversupply (Click HERE).  

There were all sorts of strips in this mess.  I kept the ones that were at least 8 in. wide, and tossed the short skinny tangled ones.  I will use these wider strips for quilt-as-you-go projects.  And now I can easily find them.

All the larger scraps got measured and tagged while I watched a Miss Marple episode on PBS.  The next step is putting the large scraps together to make batts big enough for baby quilts, since that's what I mostly make.  We call this "Frankenbatting".

I'm putting the batting pieces together with this Batting Seam Tape, which is amazingly easy.  You just butt the edges together and iron it on.  If/when I run out of it, I can overcast the batting pieces together by hand or machine.  The seams need to be flat, of course, so there's no bump in the quilt.

I have two batts done already, and it's making me feel so thrifty!  It's not like I desperately need this batting, as I have a whole roll of lovely soft poly, but I don't see any sense in either throwing it away or storing it forever.

In other news, our youngest grandsons had the day off school yesterday (conferences), so we went to the mall.  We took these pictures at a display in the book store.

Little Guy was not quite tall enough!  Walking through the mall was good exercise for us, and the boys got to go to the Lego Store and to look around at Build A Bear (just in case they want to go there for their birthdays).  

Snicklefritz the cat is still on the job, supervising my work and testing tops and pieces for softness and nap-ability.  What would I do without him?

And what would I do without you?  Thanks for reading this, and have a lovely week!

Cheers, 

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Cynthia at Oh Scrap