Waves, Soap, and Duckies

Happy Friday!  It's gloomy, rainy, and cool here (50s!  In August??) but a good day for quilting.  Heck, every day is a good day for quilting!  My almost-finish for this week is a give-away quilt.

You might recognize the shapes.  They're tumblers, cut with the Accuquilt cutter by one of our members.  There were 48 of the duckie tumblers cut when I got them.  I tried to figure out a layout that would use all of them.  In the end, I needed 49, so the center tumbler was a different duckie print, cut from some of my wonderful novelty fabric.

I added solid fabrics from my stash, and this daisy print for the backing.  The daisy print was originally bought to go with another quilt, but it works okay with this one.

Mr. Biddy is supervising here.  He went to the vet yesterday, and they think he's doing pretty good for being a 15 year old cat.

You've seen the duckies.  Here's where the waves and soap come in.
I am a walking-foot quilter.  The walking foot on my Pfaaf is built in, which is great.  Most of this tumbler quilt was quilted about 1/4 in. from each seam, but I got a little fancy in the outer border with these waves.  It's one of my favorite stencils, and this time I used soap to mark the lines.

I've used soap to mark other quilts, but I didn't think it would work on stencils.  After all, soap is wide, and you have to mark through a fairly narrow channel.  I tried it, just for giggles, and found that the plastic edges of the channels cut through the soap enough to leave quite nice marks.
Warning--it does have the same major drawback as chalk.  The marks will easily wear off if you touch them while quilting.  To counter this, I marked one border at a time (these aren't continuous), and tried to hold the quilt by the outer edges as I quilted, grasping mostly the batting and backing.

Here's what it looks like quilted.  I never try to make these waves turn the corners, I just run the lines to the edge of the quilt or start/stop at the corner seams.

Isn't this a happy print?  Our quilt group regularly donates quilts to a local charity that helps homeless families find apartments.  This quilt will go to a child who needs it.

Now all I have to do is bind it!

Here's what's on my makeshift design wall this week.  I started these blocks about a year ago, and made 42 of the small ones.  But look what happens when you put 4 together!  So far, I am loving it.  I have to make LOTS more blocks, which is what I'm sewing on my treadle in the top photo.  I'm also using my 1930s and 1940s scraps to good purpose.
What are you working on this week?  Why not join me at the linky party at Busy Hands Quilts?   It's always a good time.
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Like Sands Through the Hour Glass

...so are the days of our lives.  Although I really hope my life is not nearly as messed up as the ones on the soap operas.
Here's what I've accomplished lately with the sewing days of my life.

First, the little quilt I couldn't show you last week.  It was a gift for a friend at our quilt group.  We exchanged our Christmas gifts at our January meeting on Wednesday.

It's a scrap quilt (of course!).  The white spaces in each block are for signatures of friends or family, etc.  I also included a permanent ink pen for the signatures.  I put a label on the back, but forgot to take a picture of it.
We call this project our Brown Bag Exchange.  Every year, usually at the June meeting, anybody who wants to participate puts a fat quarter and a paper with their name on it in a paper bag.  We trade bags anonymously, and then we make something from the fat quarter as a gift for the person who brought it.

Here's a picture I took when I was binding it.  The outer border was the fabric in the bag, and the recipient was Sherry L. 

 Strangely enough, she got my bag!  She made me this wonderful pillow.  My fabric was the prairie points.  She really did a great job with the colors, and it fits well in my house.  Thanks, Sherry!

Nothing makes me want to finish a quilt more than finishing a quilt.  So I finished this one.

I made these Double Hour Glass blocks last April as leaders and enders, and set them with a subtle print from the stash.  Thursday I finally quilted and bound this little quilt.

The blocks are 6 in. finished, so everything came from the 2.5 in. squares box or strips bin.  I scrounged around for the white fabric, and I have several slightly different shades.

After I quilted in the ditch around the blocks, I marked the lines I wanted to quilt across the plain blocks.  Here it is, old school again.  I'm marking with a yardstick and soap.  The lines were wide, but that didn't matter.  It smells good, and the lines didn't disappear until after they were quilted.

I'm not sure you can see it, but I did the visible quilting with the serpentine stitch on my Pfaff electric.  Fast and fun.

You can see the back here, a hearts print in rainbow colors.

When I finished the quilting and trimmed the edges, I had some uneven pieces of backing.  I trimmed them up to the largest size possible.  I ended up with one each at 2 in., 2.5 in., 3.5 in. and 4.5 in. wide.  These will feed the bins.

It would have been better to make a narrower binding.  This one cuts off the points on the outer blocks.  I'm not used to making quilts without outer borders.

Oh, well.  This will be warm and bright, and donated to someone who needs it.

I always think of this quote on Martin Luther King day.  

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?"

 

I'm going to try to think about this all year long, and find more things I can do.

Yours in stitches,

Sylvia

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/martin_luther_king_jr.htmlLI

P.S.  I'm linking up with Myra at Busy Hands Quilts (check out her cool new pattern!) and Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts this week.

Oh, baby!

This week's finish is a flannel trip around the world.  I have finally finished a quilt for my soon-to-arrive grandson. 

There are 81 squares in the quilt, set 9 across and 9 down.  I cut them 5 in. square, and added a border of the same size.  When finished, the quilt measures 49.5 in. x 49.5 in.  It may have shrunk a little in washing, as flannel does, but I did wash all the fabric ahead of time to minimize that.

I got to use lots of my favorite flannel prints.  This is the very last "Baby Boy" print I had.

This is also the last of the cowboy teddy bear fabric.  The ducky print was left over from a burp cloth.

I was really glad I took this picture before I started sewing the squares together!  My rotten cat got into my sewing room and scattered the squares everywhere.

I tried a new thing when marking the borders for quilting--I used soap.  My husband has a weird idea of what a soap "sliver" is.  I think this is still a good sized piece of soap, but he didn't want to use it anymore and got out a new bar, so I marked the quilt with this one. 
I've been using chalk to mark with for years, but it tends to rub off as you're working.  I was hoping the soap might be better.
The verdict?  The soap is slightly better.  This big hunk marked kind of a wide line, but that was okay for what I was doing here.  And it smells nice.  This is Ivory soap, I don't know how other brands would work.  It washed off easily.
It's still babymania around here, with just about a month to go.

Last weekend, we had a baby shower.  We held it at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts in Cedarburg.  Instead of tablecloths, we used baby-style fabrics, which you can see some of here.
A real baby came to the shower!  This is my daughter's friend with her little one.  My granddaughter is the little girl in the pink, and next to her is her mother, my oldest daughter.  The old lady is me.

We will be using the fabrics from the shower to make baby quilts for charity.  Some will go to Project Linus in West Bend, and some will go to Quilts for Kids, to be given to kids in hospitals.

I've started kitting up the fabrics, and have two done so far.

The first kit features this adorable whale print.  This will be a 4-patch quilt, made from the Quilts for Kids pattern on their web site. 
Here's a link to the pdf for the pattern, if you're interested.  It's the same pattern they put in their kits, so there are instructions on returning the kit within 4-6 weeks.  Just ignore that if you're cutting your own fabric.
Quilts for Kids 4 Patch Pattern

I branched out a little for the second quilt.  The pattern comes from the Moda Bakeshop, and was submitted by Jo Kramer of Jo's Country Junction (I love her work!)
Here's the link to the free pattern:
Step Up Quilt Pattern

This quilt will be red, white, and blue, to go with the light fabric, which has little teddy bear sailors printed on it.  I'm making it smaller than the original.  It's sort of similar to the Falling Charms quilt.

My sewing room is an absolute disaster right now, with all sorts of fabrics being auditioned to go the with baby fabric.
It's a fun kind of chaos.
Have fun this week.