Crossroads

This is hot off the machine!  Hurray, I finished quilting my Crossroads quilt this morning!
It's my first Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt, from back in 2016.

It's a small quilt, only 20 blocks, so not too tough to quilt on my Pfaff.  Most colors only have one block.  I was using up 2.5 in. squares in the blocks and in the pieced border.  Some of the squares came from those tiny charm packs, which I absolutely cannot resist.

The back is a cozy flannel.  Spring is coming, but it's still cold here, especially at night, and the flannel will feel toasty as I'm binding.  I'm thinking about binding with dark blue.

It's so much fun to see some of my favorite fabrics again.

The Crossroads name comes from a Mountain Mist pattern from back in the day.  It always reminds me of the Allman Brothers song Melissa, and I've been humming it today.  "Crossroads, seem to come and go...".  I guess I'm from back in the day, too.

In other news, I finished this top.  The nine patches are made from 2 in. squares and the larger squares come from the 5 in. square bin.  The rectangles in the pieced border are also cut from 2 in. strips.

With scrappy blocks and a scrappy pieced border, this was kind of getting out of hand.  The outer border is meant to calm it down a bit.  Now, I wonder how I'm going to quilt it.  Any suggestions?

Here are some special monkeys, my youngest and oldest grandsons.  There was no school on Thursday or Friday for big brother, so Friday we took the boys to the Milwaukee County Zoo.  They are posing here with a statue of a baby gorilla.  There was a real baby gorilla just around the corner (which was absolutely adorable).

But this was my little grandson's favorite exhibit--the dairy barn!  He loves cows.  He mooed and mooed at them, and didn't ever want to leave.  I am so lucky, to get to see the world through a child's eyes again.
We all had a good time, walking around the zoo in the sunshine.
I'm wishing sunshine and quilty happiness for you this week, too.
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches
Linking up with Busy Hands Quilts, So Scrappy, and Crazy Mom Quilts.

New Years Resolutions, More or Less

Oh Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I love you!  Here are my Buckeye Beauty blocks, laid out on the floor and ready to be set together.  This will be one of the quilts I hope to finish in the new year.

I organized the blocks into groups of 4, except for the last row.  There are 72 blocks, 8 across and 9 down.

1930s fabrics and feedsacks worked well together.  I have a couple of matching print feedsacks for the eventual border.
So that's one of the quilts.  Here's the other:

The house blocks are waiting patiently for inspiration.  I want this to be a fantastic neighborhood, and I don't know exactly what I'm going to do yet.

Streets?  Grass?  Trees? What would you do?

 Happy New Year to everyone!  With 2018 fast approaching, it's a good time to reflect on 2017, and think about what we want from our lives and our quilting next year.  I do this every year--well, more or less.
Frankly, my New Years resolutions are usually not worth the paper they're written on.  For instance, I might decide to try to become slender and gorgeous next year by not eating any chocolate cake.  But the minute I make that a resolution, all I can think about is chocolate cake.  That resolution wouldn't last out the week.
Instead, I set goals, and use the terms "more" or "less".  In this case, my goal will be to eat more fruits, more vegetables, and more whole grains, and less cake.  I have a shot of making this actually happen.  Similarly, I can aim for more exercise and less television watching, and more time with family, less time cruising the internet.
This last year I finished 35 quilts.  That counts everything, from doll size to large size.  Of the 35, 19 were baby quilts, mostly for charity.  I quilted 33 of the total 35 myself, and a friend quilted the other two, both twin sized quilts.
So I don't really expect to make MORE quilts in 2018, especially since I have less time.  What I need is more BALANCE between piecing and quilting.

Here's my list of "more" for 2018.
More quilting of larger quilts
More scraps cut and organized
More quilt shows attended
More fun with other quilters

And on the "less" list:
Less fabric I can't think of a use for (I'm gonna donate it!)
Less worrying about UFOs
Less making things just because other people are making them

On the whole, I guess you can tell I'm very happy with my quilting.  This is such a rewarding hobby, and I have met so many nice people through quilts, in person and online.
People like you!  Thanks for reading this.
Happy New Year!
Sylvia@Treadlestitches
Linking up with Busy Hands Quilts and Crazy Mom Quilts.

Stars and Orange

Happy Friday!  It's a crisp fall day here, but mostly sunny.  This is my Stars in a Time Warp quilt, #1.
I wrote about piecing it HERE.
How new/old does something have to be before it's a UFO?  If it's less than a year, does it still count as a UFO?
I finished this top last February, and it just waited patiently to be quilted.  My friend Joey did the quilting on her long arm.  She did a wonderful Baptist Fan all over design, which she does freehand.  (Joey is amazing.)  All I had to do was make the binding and sew it on.

The backing came from my stash, a nice repro I bought on sale at J. J. Stitches in Sun Prairie.

I really wanted to bind it in red, but I'm trying to give other colors a chance.  This binding is a brown/red paisley print.

Look--orange!  This block has cheddar corners!  I am having a real love affair with orange.
It just so happens orange is the color for September for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.
Here's what I've been making for that.
First, the house blocks.

There are 9 of these this month.

Candy corn house, made with fabric given to me by a friend (thanks, Mary Z!)

School bus house.   I think a crazy bus lady lives here, driven nutty by noisy kids.

Party house!

Can you see the sky above this house?  It's from a scrap of Route 66 fabric I got at a flea market.  On the right it says Chicago in orange letters, and on the left is Oklahoma City (mostly caught in the seam allowance).  We live near Chicago, and my mom lives in Oklahoma City, so I just had to use these pieces.

The rest of the houses are tropical, with lots of yummy orange.
Now for the Buckeye Beauty blocks.  I got carried away, and made 11 of them.

This group of 6 fabrics didn't want to play nicely with others, so they are just paired with white.

I think these animals are dogs?  Maybe Corgis?

Halloween fun!

These 5 were more friendly, so I could use 2 prints and white.

Orange fish from a feed sack!

Autumn leaves from a feed sack scrap, plus odd orange shapes in the 4 patches.
I think orange is my new favorite color.
Whatever color is your favorite, I hope you get to sew with it this week.
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Today's link ups are:
Busy Hands Quilts
Crazy Mom Quilts
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Scrappy Chevrons

Hello!  Welcome to my blog!  Fall is in the air here in Wisconsin, so I'm taking some pictures outside before the snow starts to fly.
Today's finish is a scrappy chevron quilt.  I just can't resist chevrons.  It must be something about the cheerful ups and downs.  This quilt will be donated to a local family in need.
I got started on this completely by accident.  It's really the fault of Angela at soscrappy for hosting the fabulous Rainbow Scrap Challenge.
One set of my blocks for the challenge this year are little houses.  I'm cutting the roof pieces for the houses from 3.5 in. strips, like this:

I use my Companion Angle ruler, as you can see.
Just one problem...

There's a triangle left over on the left, and the strip now has an angle.  Not to worry, I can fix that!

Using my Easy Angle ruler, I cut a triangle from the strip, and made sure the first triangle is perfect.  Now I've got a roof for my house block, a straight strip to go back in the 3.5 in. box, and 2 extra triangles.
What can I do with the extra triangles?

How about this?  I can sew a dark print to a light print to make a square.  Then I can add two more dark triangles to make a larger triangle.  Adding a plain white triangle makes this a 6.5 in. (6 in. finished) block.  So each block uses 3 scrappy dark triangles and 1 light one.  Since the roof pieces for my houses are all dark, this worked out.  I just had to cut mostly light pieces.
I was thinking about setting them like this, but then the Chevron juju took over.

Here are all the blocks, 99 of them, to go 9 across and 11 down.
And here's the finished quilt, laid out on the floor.

If you'd like to make one of these, here's the recipe.
For each block, cut 1 light and 3 dark triangles from a 3.5 in. strip with the Easy Angle ruler (or any other ruler that works).
Sew a light triangle to a dark triangle to make a square.
Add a dark triangle to the top of the square. It should be touching the light triangle, and the right angle should be on the right.
Add a dark triangle to the left side of the square.  It should also be touching the light triangle, and the right angle should be on the right.
Cut white triangles from a 6.5 in. strip with the Easy Angle or other ruler.
Add the pieced triangles to the white triangles to make a 6.5 in. square.
(It works best to press after each of these steps.)
Make 99 blocks.
There are two kinds of rows that make up the quilt, row A and row B.  For row A, arrange the blocks so that the white triangles form a larger triangle, like the bottom row on the quilt above.
For row B, arrange the pieced triangles to form larger triangles across the row.
Alternate the rows in the quilt.  You can start with either one.  I started with an A row, so I made 6 A rows and 5 B rows.  If you start with a B row, make 6 B rows and 5 A rows.
I added 3.5 in. wide borders (because that was all I had of that wonderful fabric!).
The finished quilt should be roughly twin-sized, about 60 in. wide x 72 in. long.
I quilted it simply, up and down across the quilt, with the presser foot against the seams.  I added a row of quilting in the plain white areas using the quilting guide attachment to keep it straight.  Well, mostly straight.  The binding is red bandana print, just for fun.

BTW, here's the house block I was making:

 Why on earth didn't I buy more of that gorgeous orange?
 Have a lovely pieceful week!
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches
Linking up today with
Busy Hands Quilts
Crazy Mom Quilts
Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Kids, Books, Scraps, and Quilts

It's a scraptastic Saturday around here, and I've got my blocks done for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this month.  August's color is neutral.  Hmm, can I do neutral? 

Neutral is tough with novelty fabrics, so I decided to go for fabrics with light backgrounds.  Here's my strawberry house.   Mmm, strawberries.

This one is nice and weird.  The main fabric is printed with bandaids, and for some reason there are bugs on the bandaids.  So the door has a bug, too.

Here's a house for me.  Save our flowers, save our pets, save our trees, save our planet!

A dotty house, sugary sweet with smiling flowers in the sky.

Three Pooh bears are peeking out of this house.  From the tropical sea shell print on the roof, we can see that the Poohs have left foggy England behind for sunny Florida.  They do need to work on their spelling.

And lastly, the orange house, probably also in Florida.  Or maybe California.
I decided the neutral theme really wouldn't fit with the Buckeye Beauty blocks, so I'm skipping those this month.
Making blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is the most fun I've ever had doing homework.

This homework comes in a close second--my blocks for the Children's Library Quilt, hosted by Pat Sloan.

The official block for August is this one.  I can't stop using Dr. Seuss fabric!  I got these scraps at the rummage sale at the quilt museum in June.  There's Clifford fabric in there, too.

I'm making 12 blocks for my Children's Library Quilt, instead of the 9 Pat is giving us, so I've been finding blocks elsewhere and using the book character fabrics to sew them up.  This block is modified from Cross Keys by Gina Gempesaw, block #573 in Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks, vol. 6.
I changed the center to a solid square, and put the Very Hungry Caterpillar in there.

Lately I've been doing more quilting, as well as piecing.  Here's something I actually finished.

It's a baby quilt, made of flannel, for charity.

I tried to get my youngest grandson to post with it, but he was just too busy.

He did curl up with it later on the floor.  Tired, but fighting sleep.

I washed the quilt after he went home, and it's even more cuddly now.

Clean and soft, and ready to go to a new home.

I am so lucky!  I get to enjoy the things I love most every week--kids, books, scraps, and quilts.
How was your week?
Join me at the linky parties at Busy Hands Quilts and So Scrappy.