Orange Blocks and a Caterpillar

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It's the last Saturday of September, and the last Saturday of orange for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I'm working on sewing the blocks I've made all year into baby quilts for donation.  This little quilt uses Friendship Stars and Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric.

I'm a retired school librarian, so of course I love The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and all the other books by Eric Carle.  In this fabric, we can see his little head (before he ate all that food) and the colorful dots found on the title page (below).

The border fabric also copies those dots, but with brighter and darker colors.

I bought the caterpillar fabric in a quilt shop on our recent vacation, but I had to order the border fabric (from the Fat Quarter shop) when I decided I needed it.  Lesson learned, buy it when you see it!  (BTW, my local shop didn't have it.  I always check there first.)

The set was easy and fun to do, and one I had never done before.  Instead of sashing, I sewed a rectangle of the caterpillar fabric (cut 2.5 in. x 6.5 in.) to the top of half the blocks and the bottom of the other half.  When I sewed the rows together, I alternated the blocks, and that's what gives it the staggered look.  I chose to make a mini-rainbow with the colors.

I absolutely love orange, especially Halloween prints!

More orange blocks are done. 

The 1890s reproduction prints in Poinsettia blocks,

and of course Ice Cream blocks.  Orange sherbet, mango ice cream, maybe even pumpkin and cantaloupe!

So what's ahead for next week?  As you can imagine, I've got lots more blocks to sew into tops.  Once I've figured out which blocks go where, I use paper labels and clothespins to organize the rows at the treadle.  I usually piece in the mornings, while waiting for my Baby Buddy to be dropped off.

Once the tops are made, there's the usual backing, batting, and basting to deal with.  Then Mrs. Pfaff and I get to work doing some simple quilting.

But first Baby Buddy and I need to go to the park!  Sometimes I wonder why we buy so many toys, when his favorite things are sticks, rocks, leaves, and pine cones.  Here he's banging on the metal post, making lots of exciting noise.

Little Buddy, Baby Buddy's big brother, was Student of the Week this week at kindergarten.  He got to bring in his favorite book for storytime.  Guess what it was!  That's right, The Very Hungry Caterpillar!

I hope you have fun this week with all your favorites, whatever they may be.  Stay safe, and keep sewing!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy 

 

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Ice Cream in August

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

August is an ice cream kind of month.  Even here in Wisconsin, it's usually hot and muggy, which makes the cool sweet taste of ice cream that much better.  

These ice cream quilt blocks won't cool you off, but they won't drip on you, either.  They're part of my blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, in the color of the month--aqua.  I had a hard time finding flavors for aqua, got any ideas?

When it comes to flavors, make mine chocolate frozen custard!  I indulged in this on our way home from our vacation.

My little buddies just happened to wear a little aqua today.  Here's Little Buddy with a tiny chocolate cone, and Baby Buddy just finishing his tiny vanilla one.  Fun, easy for even babies to eat, and not too messy.  I got a package of the little cones at the grocery store, and put about two tablespoons of ice cream in each cone.  Little Buddy may have had more than one.

 By the way, these are the cones I'm talking about.  Aren't they cute?

I've been treadling madly since I got home, making aqua blocks.  These are my 20 half square triangles for the month.

I also finished my Positivity Quilt, which I will post more about on Sunday.  It will be going to Mercy Hospital in Sacramento, CA as soon as I can get it in the mail.

 

 More aqua--this classic Chevy at the Henry Ford Museum.

I'm a Ford girl all the way, but this beauty is something special.

Little Buddy starts kindergarten next week, and the following week all the rest of the grandkids are back to school.  Baby Buddy will be our only playmate during the day.  It will be very different around here without Little Buddy, (much quieter for one thing!) but we'll still see him after school and on days off.

For now, we'll enjoy the rest of these summer days together.

Have a lovely week!

 

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Check out these fabulous linky parties!  I'm linking up with:

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy  

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Goodbye to July

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

 How are your RSC blocks coming along?

It's the last week of dark blue for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I got my hsts done, and some of them use strips I cut from scraps I bought at the museum sale in June.  It's fun to use new fabrics, no matter where they came from!

Speaking of scraps, these are my dark blue small scraps and strips, plus a couple of orphan strip sets.  I used them to make these ...

hearts!  We're getting close to the end of the RSC year, and I think I finally have a plan for the heart blocks.  They're only 6 in. square, but I should have enough of them to make a good sized baby quilt.

I've also got a plan for my ice cream blocks, seen here in shades of dark blue.  I'm calling them blue berry and/or plum, with stars or sprinkles or swirls.  Mm, ice cream.  Just what we need on a hot summer day.

When my mom was here a couple of weeks ago, she and my husband and I spent a lovely Saturday at the Art Institute of Chicago.  I of course took photos of art that inspired me as a quilter.

This is a fireplace screen, made of mosaic tiles.  Check out that border!

The carvings on this antique chest look like quilting lines to me.  

This one even has stars!

Lastly, returning to the blue theme, is this chocolate jar.  Chocolate definitely deserves a beautiful container.  It's one of nature's miracles we sometimes take for granted.

I think I need to get some chocolate ice cream! 

Have a great weekend, and a lovely week ahead, with whatever treats you like best.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap 

Stacks

 Hi!  Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Baby quilts made with novelty fabrics are kind of my thing.  I have an extra incentive this time of year to make quilts for the Hands2Help charity quilt drive sponsored by Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  (Click HERE for more information on H2H 2021.)  Lately I've been going through my books, finding quilt patterns I've always wanted to make.  This one is called Stacks.

It comes from this book, Growing Up Modern, by Allison Harris.  She also has a great blog called Cluck Cluck Sew.  I'm using her free pattern for my heart blocks, by the way.

This is what the pattern looked like in the book, vertical stacks of fun fabrics to be made in three different sizes.  Doesn't look like my quilt at all, does it?  That's because I did the "What If" to it.  What if I made the colors stack horizontally instead of vertically?  What if they were scrappy?  What if they were in rainbow order, and I used a light fabric at the top and bottom?  (Does this happen to you?)

It's still Allison's pattern, just my variation.  I followed her directions for cutting and sewing the pieces, although I made it slightly smaller. The colors are inspired by Baby Buddy's Duplo blocks.

The back is this cute giraffe print, and the quilting is simple lines, done with the serpentine stitch on my Pfaff.

Last weekend was CRAZY.  We had all 3 of my youngest daughter's children here from Thursday through Monday.  I thought I respected young parents before, but now I appreciate them even more!  The kids were very good, but the logistics of looking after a teenager, a preschooler and a 13 month old day and night are serious! 

 And of course, I missed them the minute they went home.

We had Tuesday off from regular babysitting, so I got some red scraps cut and sewn for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  Log cabin blocks (above)

Heart blocks from the crumbs/strings bin

The last of the plus blocks, with some Mickey Mouse fabric I got on my antiquing trip

and this month's ice cream cone blocks.  The flavors are, from left to right, Raspberry/Citrus Sherbet Ripple, Cherry Vanilla (with lots of cherries), Strawberry (somebody forgot to cut off the leaves), and Pomegranate with candy swirls (hey, it could happen).

Last month I mentioned Blue Moon ice cream, invented in Milwaukee, but had never eaten any.  We fixed that!  

Cedar Crest is a local dairy.  They only had Blue Moon in little cups.

Here's what it looks like.  It has a delicious almond flavor, and Little Buddy and I really like it.  You just have to ignore the toothpaste color.

Today feels like a vacation after the excitement of last weekend, but there are still chores to do.  I need to get out to the grocery store this morning.  Maybe I'll check out the exotic ice cream flavors in the freezer case while I'm there.

And now, grandkid pictures.

Baby Buddy busy playing,

and Little Buddy, gently petting our ragged old cat Biddy.

Have a wonderful weekend, and a great week ahead.

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

 

Safe at Home

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It's finished!  Safe at Home is my name for my house quilt, one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects for 2020.

Last week, it was a roadblock.  This week, it's done and the way ahead is clear.

The pattern I used is called Home Made, was designed by Monique Jacobs, and was published in American Patchwork and Quilting magazine, issue # 162.  I used the house pattern, but made more blocks and set them differently than the original.  

When I started making the blocks in January of 2020, I had no idea what the year would bring.  I was just having fun using scraps of vintage fabrics, feedsacks, and 1930s reproductions in the color of the month.  

In March, the illness and death of the pandemic hit New York hard, and it was suddenly terribly real to all of us all over the country.  Home was more important than ever, as millions of kids (including our grandchildren) started virtual school, and millions of adults either worked from home or were unemployed.  

This quilt will always represent 2020 to me: the worry and fear we all felt every time we sneezed or coughed, the hilarious zoom fails of virtual preschool, the mask making, the dreaded toilet paper shortage, and the uncertainty still hanging over everything.

As I've mentioned on this blog before, I used a quilt-as-you-go method on this quilt.  (After all this time, I must admit I am REALLY tired of this backing fabric.)  I will be posting more on the way I do this in the near future.

 The border is a vintage 1930s-1940s print fabric, probably meant for dresses or blouses.  I only had just over a yard of it, so that determined how wide it would be.  I quilted simple diagonal lines in the border, and bound the quilt with a green solid, also vintage, from my basement "collection".

 My youngest grandson, whom I call Baby Buddy, was not really in a posing mood yesterday.  He's sort of ho-hum about the whole thing.

In other news, I got a few more half square triangles done for this year's RSC.  These are loose on my design wall, not yet sewn into groups of four, but this may end up being what I do with them.

And the blue ice cream cones!  I looked up some blue colored ice cream flavors on Wikipedia, and was surprised to find out about Blue Moon ice cream, invented in Milwaukee!  So I'm saying the cone on the bottom left is Blue Moon.  Above it is Blue Heaven, a blue colored Australian ice cream flavored with vanilla and raspberry (mine has little candies), next to a Blueberry ice cream with raspberry ripple and tiny sprinkles.  Lastly, we have a truly original imaginary flavor, blueberry with Victoria sponge cake, strawberries and cherries.  All this, and no calories.

Outside, the rhubarb is getting taller and looking very healthy.  Little Buddy hoped it might be ready to cut.  I made him some rhubarb cake from last year's canned rhubarb, so he's content to wait a little longer.

Leaves are appearing on the black raspberry canes, an encouraging sign.

Spring is progressing as it always does here, two steps forward and one step back.  There was frost on the grass this morning, but sunshine the rest of the day.

I'm wishing sunshine for you this week, and blue skies.

Cheers for reading,

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