Rainbow Rail Fence, and Lots of Blocks

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!  

Surprise!  This week I didn't make a baby-sized quilt.  This top, that I'm calling Rainbow Rails, is nearly twin-sized, and used up 88 blocks from last year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge bin.

I got the idea for rail fence blocks shaded light to dark from Julie of Julie's Quilts and Costumes.  (Click HERE for another of her ideas for these blocks.)  She graciously gave me permission to copy, so I did!

Making these blocks last year was fun!  I enjoyed looking for novelty prints in all the colors, and using up scraps.

Lots of Dr. Seuss prints ended up here.  So did a variety of light prints.

I may have mentioned I plan to make some larger tops this year for a charity that helps kids who have been abused.  The organizer came to our quilt guild recently, and told us the optimal sizes of quilts and/or tops for them is either 40 in. x 60 in., or 50 in. x 70 in.  At 52 in. x 70 in., Rainbow Rails is only 2 in. wider, so I don't think she'll mind.

With all those seams ending at the edge of the top, it seemed like a good idea to add a border.  I chose this one because of all the words of love printed on it.  Plus it's blue, my favorite "neutral" lol.

 This top will go to the organizer, who quilts them on her long arm.  

There were enough blocks left over to make one of my usual baby quilts, so I'll be quilting that up soon. 

Wow, can you believe it's the last Saturday in February?  How are your RSC blocks coming along?

I added a new set (of course).  It's this block, called Thrifty in Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.  It's a 9 in. block, and uses up 3.5 in. squares and 2 in. squares.

Here are the light blue ones, and ...

the dark blue ones, and ...

pink ones, to catch up from last month.

These Bright Hopes blocks in blue were made mostly from scrap rectangles given to our quilt group by a gentleman who once managed a fabric store.

There were a LOT of the Chicago Cubs rectangles.  I need to find another project to use them up.

Disclaimer:  The following blocks were NOT made by me...

except for the bright blue/red plaid in the center of the top row.  This was our guild's block of the month for February.  Our leader on this project, Nancy Queen of Scraps, gives us a pattern each month.  Everybody who wants to participate makes as many blocks as they want to, all the blocks go in a pile, and a name is drawn from the makers.  This month, I won!  There were 28 blocks!  All of them are made from plaids.  

I'm looking forward to making this quilt, it's such a dramatic design.  Plus I have a whole bin of plaid fabrics.  Many thanks to Queen Nancy and our lovely guild members.

My youngest grandsons had Monday off school for Presidents Day, so we got to have them here with us.  It was too cold to go outside but they had fun indoors.  Buddy is wearing his costume, pretending to be his favorite video game character (Link from the Legend of Zelda games).  Little Guy brought his Luigi and Donkey Kong toys.

Snicky the cat and our new kitten Queen Elizabeth III (nicknamed Lizzy) are getting along well now.  They gallop through the house and play together, but they also need quiet time to rest up.  Lizzy found a comfy spot in a pile of quilts.

I'm looking forward to covering up with a quilt and checking out all the great quilt blogs.  There might be a cup of tea and cookie as well.

Have a wonderful week!  Stay warm and stay well.

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

A Happy New Year

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Happy New Year!

The hardest thing about blogging for me is coming up with titles for my posts!  This week it was easy:  I took the title from this postcard.

One hundred and thirteen years ago, in 1911, my great grandmother sent this New Years card to her mother and father, my great great grandparents.  Here's the text of it:

Dear parents:  Thought I would send you a card telling you the mine buildings partly burned last night.  How is Pearl's foot?  Will and Richard aren't well.  

Bessie

Bessie turned 21 years old on December 28, the day before the card was posted.  She and her husband Will Risley had been married for 2 1/2 years, and their son Richard (my grandfather) was about 18 months old.  Pearl was Bessie's younger sister, 15 years old at the time.

Communication in rural Indiana was so different then than it is now.  It's unlikely that either family had a telephone, so letters and postcards were very important for sharing local news and family concerns.

Bessie was a quilter, and I am lucky enough to have some of her quilts.  I wonder if she sewed to keep her worries over Will and Richard and Pearl in check, or if she even had time with a sick toddler and husband to look after.

We had a lovely Christmas celebration this week, with food and presents and games.  And of course, the obligatory group photo.

Our oldest daughter made us some new picture ornaments for our tree.  The top two are her children, Mr. H and Miss E.  (Mr. H has since decided to cut his hair and looks much older.)  Somehow we didn't have an ornament with Little Guy's photo, so my daughter made one for him too.  Picture ornaments are always my favorites, even if they become tattered.

In spite of all the festivities, I actually finished a quilt!  That's because all I had to do was bind it lol, and I did that completely by machine.

The quilt was a Block of the Month by Barbara Brackman called Antebellum Album, which celebrated signature quilts made in the 1840s and 1850s by school girls, North and South.  It is free, and is still available online (Click HERE).

This was the first block, called Wandering Lover.  I started the quilt in late January 2018.  

It's not meant to be a Christmas quilt.  Red and green were very fashionable colors for quilts in this time period, and I had lots of the reproduction prints in my stash.

My friend Joey Mahieu quilted this one for me recently.  The main blocks have these wonderful feathered circles quilted on them, which were placed perfectly, as you can see in this block.  Ms. Brackman encouraged participants to write and draw in permanent ink on our blocks.  On this one, I wrote May the Circle Be Unbroken.

You can see more of Joey's beautiful quilting in the feathered border.  I love running my hands over it.

The backing is a wide back from Connecting Threads.  The binding is a green print that is also in the top.

I'm keeping this one, and I'll probably bring it out at Christmas just because of the colors.

Are you thinking about the upcoming New Year?  I'm trying to decide what to make for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.  

This is a problem I need to tackle.  It's my "Big Scraps" basket.  I define Big Scraps as those at least 6 in. wide but smaller than a fat quarter.  As I get big scraps, I bundle them up by color and stuff them into this bushel basket until needed.  I'm sure you tell it's getting out of hand.

This year I'm going to concentrate on using these big scraps to make RSC quilts.  I wonder how many quilts I can get out of this basket?

Now for something completely silly.

I bought a little waffle maker!  It was an impulse buy, for sure.  I was walking by it in the store.  It was adorable, and made cute little 4 in. waffles.  Not even expensive.  And they had purple ones!  It practically hopped in the cart.

Following the directions carefully, I made little waffles this morning, and they came out great!  The young grandsons will be here several days next week.  We'll see if they like waffles.

This year is coming to a close in just a few days.  As always, 2024 was a mix of good and bad times, joy and heartache.  Next year will probably be the same.  The joys make it worthwhile and help us weather the bad times.

I'm wishing joy for you in the coming week, and all next year.  Happy New Year!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

  

Purple Butterflies

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Today I have two quilts to show.  

First, the small quilt for donation, which is also a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project.  I made DOZENS of string blocks this year, and this is only the second quilt.

Lots of skinny strips and triangles make up these blocks.  I always feel thrifty when making them.  Can you spot the purple butterfly print?

The border is a different purple butterfly print.  Years ago I bought a bag of fabric at Goodwill, and there were SIX YARDS of this fabric in it.  I have loved using it.  It goes with most of the colors of the string blocks.

I've pinned up the back here to show you.  I bought this cotton fabric at the Winter Quilt Show a few years ago.  It cost $2 for a 2 yard piece.  Great, right?  But there was a problem.

These Easter theme borders were on either side of the dots.  They might have looked a little weird sideways on the quilt, so I cut them off.  (Don't worry, I'll find a use for them.)  The resulting dot print was narrow, but I pieced it to make it wide enough.  For quilting I did diagonal lines through the blocks.  The binding is a scrap of solid lavender.

So that's quilt #1, one of my usual small quilts for kids.  The next one is different.

This is officially a UFO.  And it has kind of a long story.

My niece Jenny died in August of 2021 from a massive aneurism at the age of 39.  Butterflies were her favorite thing, and purple/lavender was her favorite color.  I started making this quilt that fall, with the plan to give it to my sister as a comfort quilt.  I found this pieced butterfly pattern/tutorial online (click HERE), and started making blocks from Kaffe Fassett fabrics and light prints from my stash.

I had all the blocks made and the border (also a Kaffe print) ordered when my sister died in May of 2022.  For a while I couldn't even look at them.  I set the project aside.  What was I going to do with it now?  I didn't think it would be a good fit for her husband or her son.

In time, I decided to finish the quilt as a comfort quilt for me.  My friend Joey Mahieu is a professional quilter, and she quilted it for me.  I picked it up the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Can you see the hearts and swirls in the quilting?  Joey did a wonderful job (as always!).

This week I bound it.  The backing is a soft flannel, and Snicky the cat loved it so much he wouldn't let me sew!  I had to wait until he left the room.

I can't wait to snuggle up under the quilt after the Christmas quilts are put away.

Speaking of Christmas, it's almost here!  This week Little Guy had his program at school.  You can probably tell he loved it!  We loved it too.

The snow this week feels very seasonally appropriate. We will probably get lots more after the holidays, this is winter in Wisconsin, after all.
 

Tomorrow I'll be baking cookies with my daughters and grandchildren.  Icing and sprinkles and sugar, oh my!  

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!  And happy quilting to everyone!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Oops! Not Really A Stretched Star

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

How are your Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks coming along?  It's great seeing what everyone is doing with them each week.

This week I put together some of the "stretched star" blocks I made for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this year.  When I did, I discovered a BIG MISTAKE.  You might be able to see it in the photo above. 

The big pieces in the blocks are 5 in. squares.  White squares go across two of the corners to make the blocks.  The resulting white triangles are supposed to touch. Mine can just sort of wave to each other. 

Why?  Because I cut them one quarter inch too small!! (Sound of hand smacking forehead).

This is what they were supposed to look like.  I cut my white squares at 2 1/2 in. x 2 1/2 in.  The RIGHT way for a 5 in. square is 2 3/4 in. x 2 3/4 in.  I was off by a quarter inch.  Ack!

Now, I am not a newbie.  I have been making quilts for more than 40 years.  Yeah, I admit I'm bad at math, but maybe I should have thought to test out how the blocks went together before I made nearly 200 of them?  (Sigh).  Ripping is not an option, since I cut off the corners underneath after stitching.

Anyway, once I realized what I had done, I went ahead and finished this little donation quilt.  Kids and their parents are probably not going to know or care about the goof up.  

On the plus side, every block has a different print, which I hope will be fun for kids to look at.  There are lots of space-related squares, like Marvin the Martian and other cute aliens.  

On the back, robots!  I've had this fabric a long time.  Originally I thought I'd cut out the robot squares/rectangles, but I didn't want to make Swiss cheese out of it.  Plus it would need more MATH, and I'm kind of skittish about that now.  Yeah, on the back works just fine.

By the way, have you noticed all the interesting designs on selvedges?  The robot fabric had these tiny rockets.  It's just something fun and extra, and I love it.

Lesson learned!  You can bet I will definitely double (or triple) check next year's RSC blocks for accuracy.

I have plans to use the rest of the blocks, don't worry, but not as stretched stars. 

Buddy and Little Guy love to put puzzles together.  This one was 100 pieces, just right for their ages.  We all had a good time after school yesterday, and they couldn't wait to show their mom when she came to pick them up.

Our Christmas cactus is blooming again, and it's a joy to see.  The last time it bloomed, Snicky the cat was a kitten, and he chewed all the blossoms off.

The following is political, so feel free to skip it.

My mom reminded me of a quote yesterday, that I believe applies to the darkness that is coming in my country.

Martin Luther King said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."  

Let us be the light.

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

Rainbow Strings, Black Blocks, and Breaking A Bad Habit

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It's still summer here, over 80 degrees every day which is unusual for late September.  My only complaint is the lack of rain, but we may get some this weekend.

As long as the weather holds, I'll be taking pictures outside.  I'm calling this little quilt Rainbow Strings, and it's my first Rainbow Scrap Challenge finish for 2024's blocks.

The border is a dark print, in honor of September being dark month at the RSC.  Just kidding, I just liked it with the strings because of all the colors.  It looks like fireworks to me.  I bought this piece in an antique shop in Bloomington, Indiana, when we were there for the eclipse.

The backing is also rainbow--rainbow stripes!  I had to add a strip of solid fabric each at the top and bottom to make it long enough.

I tried to lay the quilt out to get a flat photo, but somebody thought it was play time.  Snicky!  What are you doing?

I distracted him with a toy and quickly snapped this photo.

The quilting is diagonal lines in serpentine stitch, 3 lines across each 6 in. square.

There will be more string quilts to come, as I made a LOT of string blocks this year.

Black Blocks

Black scraps are fun in these potato chip blocks!  This block has 2 penguin prints, 2 cat prints, buttons, jelly beans, stars, stripes, and a Harry Potter symbol.

Here are the rest of them!

Also, I made these black hexagon blocks for my 1800s reproduction quilt.  They look kind of dull just by themselves...

but much better when mixed with the other colors!  Someone once told me black prints are to a scrap quilt like salt is to food--they enhance the "flavor".  This is a bigger quilt, and a more long-term project.

Breaking Bad Habits (or Trying To)

This mess is evidence of one of my Bad Habits.   Most of these pieces are leftovers from backing.  For many years I have mostly used light fabrics for backing (can you tell?).  When I finished a quilt and trimmed off the extra backing,  I had the bad habit of  just stuffing the backing strips in a basket for "later".

Well, it's later.  I have more time now that my grandsons are in school all day, so my excuse for not dealing with this has evaporated.  Oh, dear.  This is a LOT.

Remember this old joke? How do you eat an elephant?  The punch line is One bite at a time.  I would prefer not to think about consuming endangered animals, but I get the idea.  We can do lots of hard things by breaking them down into manageable steps.  So I started.

Step one was sorting out the few colorful prints and trimming them up into useful pieces.  There weren't very many, so that didn't take long.  Next, I divided the light strips into piles by width--small, medium, and large.  For the next week, I would take a pile to the ironing board, iron at least 10 strips, and trim them to useful widths.  If they were too short, I cut them into squares and/or rectangles.  It felt great to finish a pile, and that helped me keep going.

This is what I ended up with.  The strips are 4.5 in., 3.5 in., 2.5 in, and 2 in. wide.  All this has been added to the Parts Department for future quilts.  And now when I finish a quilt, I'm cutting up the backing strips as soon as I trim the quilt!

Are you ready for this?  I took this photo outside my grocery store last week.  Fall is coming!

Have a wonderful week, fellow quilters!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Check out all the great quilt blogs at these links:

Finished or Not Finished Friday

So Scrappy, Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Oh Scrap