For the Children

I love making things for kids, so this was a very good week.  It feels good to finish projects, even small ones, like the dinosaur pillowcase I finally made for my grandson, to go with his dinosaur quilt.

Isn't this cute fabric?  I was pointing out different kinds of dinosaurs in the print to my Little Buddy, but I got the T. Rex wrong.  "No, that's a raptor," he said, and showed me which one really was the T. Rex.  He should know, it's his very favorite dino. 

He also loves Daniel Tiger, so I made this pillowcase to put on when the dino one is in the wash.

At naptime on Monday, I got the finishing touches done on the baby sweater for my daughter's friend's new baby.  The knitting was all done,  I just had to sew on the buttons and the little applique.

I've had this duckie applique in my stash since my own kids were little!  It was a sew-on applique, not an iron-on, and somehow I just never got around to using it.
Click HERE for the sweater pattern.  It's knit from the top down, and is seamless.  I didn't follow the pattern exactly for the number of rows, etc., just used experience and common sense.  My way makes a size 3-6 months.
The baby shower is later today, so that was motivating me to wrap it up (yes, literally).

My last project is this little quilt.
I was inspired to make it by quilts I saw on the Sew Preeti Quilts blog.  (Click HERE for the specific post.)  Preeti made six quilts to send to the Socorro Foundation in Texas, which helps families released from federal agencies.  Her post was very moving.

The quilts will be used at the shelter and washed frequently, so they need to be sturdy.  There is a list of specific requirements and sizes HERE.

Isn't this animal print a hoot?  I had two fat quarters of it, and nearly used up every scrap.  I bought the fat quarters (at a highly discounted price!) from a friend of a friend who was destashing.

The small scraps for the nine patch blocks came from this bag.  It was stuffed full of 2 in. bright strips when I started cutting.  Since it's more efficient to cut several quilts at once, I cut pieces for two more quilts while I was at it.  Do you think there's enough for yet one more?  If not, no worries, there might be more fabric around here somewhere.

Thursday morning we took Little Buddy and went to Holy Hill Basilica and National Shrine, which is in a nearby town.  The church complex overlooks the surrounding woods and farmland, and it's a great place to see the changing colors of the leaves.

The sky was a little overcast, but the view was still amazing.  I took these photos from the tower, which you are allowed to climb in good weather.

Sights like these help me to remember to live my values every day.

Have a wonderful week, and thanks for reading.
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:
Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Angela at So Scrappy
Alycia at Alycia Quilts 
Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Time to Sew

Bella, our dog, says hi.  She's worn out today, but she has had an amazing week.  She loves Christmas, for several reasons.  There are children's faces to lick, food scraps to snarf up off the floor, more kind hands to pet her, a present or two, and maybe even some Christmas ham in her bowl.  She even loves the mailman who brings packages to the door.  January might seem kind of flat to her.

But not to me!  It's all done--the shopping, wrapping, cleaning, baking, hugs and laughter and merrymaking.  Time to reveal the secret sewing, and to get back to making the needles fly.

Here's the little wall hanging I made for the Brown Bag Challenge at our quilt group.  Each participant puts a fat quarter and a slip of paper with their name on it in a brown bag, and we exchange bags.  We make something (pretty much anything goes) using the fat quarter for the person who brought it, which we give as a gift at Christmas.

The fat quarter in the brown bag I got was the white-on-white fabric I used for the background.  On the slip of paper with the person's name was a request for a Christmas table runner or a wall hanging, with cardinals if possible.  I delivered the cardinals, courtesy of Connecting Threads.com, seen here in the border.  I also made a matching pot holder, but didn't get a photo of that.

I added these corners on the back, to assist in hanging.  Have you done this?  Was it useful, or not very?  I've never done this before, and I'm not sure.

I don't make a lot of sewing projects for Christmas gifts.  It increases the stress, which I can do without.  I did make each grandchild a new pillowcase.  It was fun choosing the fabrics for them.  My granddaughter got vintage kittens, Little Buddy's has tractors (of course), my second-oldest grandson got a Minecraft print, a video game he loves, but I was stumped on the oldest grandson, Big Buddy.  My husband reminded me that Big Buddy will be in high school next year (!!!), so we chose a manly plaid.

I love my family, and I feel like I'm the luckiest person on earth, but I don't mind that the holidays are just about over and I have some time off babysitting.  I have so many UFOs to finish, and I'm hoping to make a dent in them during this long weekend.
The top above was inspired by a lady in my quilt group (the amazing Laverne) who brought a similar top to show and tell some months ago.

It's very simple, just charm squares with 1.5 in. rectangles sewn to two adjacent sides.  Mine is a lot smaller than Laverne's was, because I ran out of the fabric I was using for the narrow pieces.
Everything for this charity quilt comes from the stash.
I'm not sure if I'm going to quilt it myself, or give it to the long armers in the group so they can do a more professional job.

My Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilts from this year are STILL in progress.  I'm adding brown print borders to the Wagon Trail quilt sections.  This is the big "half".  Once the borders are done, it's on to the quilting!

I hope to get this one done soon, but we'll see.   My 2017 RSC quilts are still waiting to be finished.

But that's not stopping me from thinking about RSC quilts for 2019!  This is my current idea--8 pointed stars made from two fabrics in the designated color, plus a white background.  I love all the rainbow star quilts Angela and others have made for the RSC.

This was the view out our back door on Christmas morning.  It's a White Christmas!  Never mind that it all melted by the next day.
Little Buddy is really hoping for more snow so he can build another snowman.  Eventually I'm sure he's going to get his wish.  This is a Wisconsin winter, after all.

With snow, or without, may your days be merry and bright.  Happy New Year!
Cheers for reading,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches
Linking up with
Angela at soscrappy
Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Myra at Busy Hands Quilts
Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Green Grow the Quilt Blocks

Hello and welcome!  This is my week for making Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks, in this month's color of green. 
The blocks I've been working on since January are Mary's Baskets and Wagon Trail, in 1800s reproduction fabrics.  I'm trying to make a dent in my repro scraps.  What a hope.
Here are the green Mary's Baskets:

and the Wagon Trail blocks:

Do you see the odd one in the lower right corner?  I found another purple strip, so I added it in.  You can never have enough purple.
This was all I was planning to do with the RSC this year.  Last year was so much fun.  I really looked forward to each new month.  And it did help tame down my scraps a little.
But last year I had two projects with two different kinds of scraps--1930s repros and bright colors.  I was really missing the bright colors this year.
So I started yet another quilt!

It's called Fly Away Home, by Kate Henderson, from her book Strip Savvy.

It's a cute book, with lots of good ideas.
Fly Away Home is a two block quilt.  Block A is this simple one:

Since I didn't start this quilt at the beginning of the year, I'm catching up on 3 months worth.  I've got January's light blue, February's purple, and March's green blocks done.
The alternate block is this one:

It's a cute little flying geese block, which gives the quilt its name.  I only put one block together, since I don't want to have all of the blocks with the same colors.  As the months go by, I'll make more flying geese and add them into blocks.
So much fun, so little time.
The only things I finished this week are two pillowcases.

My little buddy went with me to drop them off at the quilt shop, where volunteers were hard at work making lots of pillowcases for National Quilting Day.  (You can see photos of the ladies sewing and cutting as soon as I get them up on the Ties That Bind blog.)
This is my third year of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and for me it just keeps getting better.  I can't thank Angela enough for hosting it!
Have a wonderful rainbow-filled week.
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches
I'm linking up (late!) with So Scrappy, Busy Hands Quilts, and Can I Get A Whoop Whoop.