Orange Orphan

Happy Leap Day, everyone!  And welcome to Treadlestitches.  It's the last day of February, of course, and it's also the end of orange month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so it was a good time for me to finish up this little orphan block quilt.

Last year, our guild had a block of the month mystery quilt, presented by our own Pam W.  The theme was friendship, and each month, Pam would give us a block pattern variation on Friendship Star.

I started out making my blocks with vintage, feedsack, and reproduction fabrics, mostly in reds and blues.  Because this particular block pattern was handed out in October, I went nuts and made it in orange and green Halloween prints.  It did not play well with the others, so I set it aside and made another block in red and blue.  (I'm quilting that quilt now, and hope to have it done next month.)

To finish off this orange orphan block, I added a double row of 2.5 in. (cut) squares, again using vintage, feedsacks, and repro fabrics.  Some of these had come out to play recently in my house blocks.  I bound it with a solid orange from my basement "collection".

Isn't this back wild?  It's a vintage fabric, and was made into a curtain when I found it at a flea market.  I'm guessing 1930s to 1940s for when it was originally printed.

Here's the curtain.  It was sewn nicely at the top, but not hemmed, and had little or no wear.  I wonder if it was ever used.  I also wonder what it would have looked like as a curtain.  It would certainly add some color to a room.

I have this little wooden quilt hanger in my dining room, and I would like to have more quilts to hang here so I can change them out with the seasons and holidays.  When I got this quilt finished, I just couldn't wait til October to hang it up and see what it looks like.  So this is a preview.  I'll put it away now and put up some spring quilts.
Hurray, one less orphan block.
In other news:

My Little Buddy asked me to take his picture.  He's sitting in the toy dinosaurs bin, and holding one of his favorite T. Rex dinosaurs.  I want to give him lots of attention now.  He's getting a baby brother no later than next Saturday.

We were finger painting this week.  At first he would just put two blobs of paint on a page and say he was done.  We progressed to making this masterpiece together.

What do you think of this paper towel?  I really love the "quilting"!
The joy of quilting is everywhere.

I'm going to a quilt show today, the first of the season here, so I had better get going.  I'm wishing the joys of quilting for you this week--viewing, touching (only NOT at the quilt show!), and creating.
Cheers for reading,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:
Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop
Angela at So Scrappy (Home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge)
Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday
Cynthia at Oh Scrap

A Good Start

Under this dish towel is a new start.

Specifically, this is a new sourdough starter.  It works with just flour and water.  I add a little of each every day for six days, and then bake the bread on the seventh day.  Then I store the starter in the frig and make bread, rolls, etc. whenever.  I had kind of gotten out of the habit of doing this, but I want to get back to it again.
Here's the link to the recipe:  Mary Janes farm sourdough starter

There should have been a label on that bag of vintage scraps I bought recently.  It should have said something like Warning!  Quilt Starter!  If you feed it, quilts will come!

It was just a gallon zip lock bag, stuffed with relatively small scraps mostly from the 1930s.  Once I got the triangles cut out, here's what happened.

I used the equilateral triangles to make these blocks:

I'm calling them Pyramids.  The block is a simplification of an old block called Sugar Loaf.  Adding the white made the print triangles go farther, and of course so did adding the yellow.

I didn't have to worry about putting two of the same print next to each other.  Very few of the scraps were repeats. 

I'm up to 14 rows of blocks, and I think that will do.  They're sewn in sets of two rows each here, and they'll wait on the bed in the spare room until I figure out how I'm going to quilt them and what I'm going to do about a border.
What would you do?  Would you use a solid color?  If so, what color?  The yellow is a darker shade, and the triangles are every color under the sun.  What do you think--green?  blue?  purple?

In the meantime ...

I also cut half square triangles (LOTS of them!).  I'm pairing them with white to make

these little blocks.

This block, Brackman #1689a, has several names, including Double X #1 and Three and Six.  I'm opting for Three and Six.  I needed a block that would look okay with multiple scrap pieces.  Most of the scraps were only big enough to cut one triangle, so nothing matches.  Again the white will help.

But wait!  There's more!

Some of the pieces weren't big enough for triangles, but worked okay as short narrow strips.  These pieces were cut 2 in. x 5 in.  Three of them sewn together make a 4.5 in. finished Rail Fence square.

I'm thinking of setting them in a different way.  We'll see if I get that far this week.

Here are even more pieces!  These rectangles were either too short or too narrow to work for the Rail Fence blocks.  The closer stack is of pieces cut 2 in. x 4 in., and I have no idea what I'm going to do with them. (Any suggestions?)  The other stack has pieces 1.5 in. wide.  String blocks may work for them.

Believe it or not, there is still this big pile of leftover pieces!!!  How does this happen?  This looks like more than I had to start with! Maybe they can be crumbs?  They're too small for the pieces I was cutting, but just too neat to throw away.

If you're wondering why I'm only blogging every other week, here's the reason!  Captain Adorable and his older brother need lots of attention, and I am happy to give it to them.  I'm the luckiest grandma ever.

I had lots of fun cutting and sewing this week.  I didn't get anything finished, of course.  But I did make a good start.

Wishing you perfect tension and flying bobbins.

Daisy Quilt Finish

Hello!  I'm back this week, with a quilt finish made possible by my friend Joey.

I'm calling this quilt Summer Daisy.

I bought the petals on Ebay many years ago.  They were already cut out, and the edges were hand-basted, ready for applique.  I top-stitched them to background blocks, and added a stem made from purchased binding.
Some of the fabrics are really weird.  Check out the Bambi-like deer in the flower above.  The fabrics date to the 1950s and 1960s.
I finished this top literally years ago, and it was in my stack of shame when Joey last visited.  We pieced a back, and she took it home to quilt for me.
Isn't the quilting wonderful?  It was done by Joey on her long arm machine.

She did a kind of loop de loop in the sashing and border that really sets them off.  Thank you, Joey!

 I still have to sew the binding down.  I'll be doing that this week, while waiting for supper to cook, or during the baby's naps, if he takes any.  He's still too little to have a set schedule yet.

I also have a flimsy finish!  These are the nine patch blocks I made with vintage prints and solid colors (vintage or new).  I added a simple border of squares.

There are 99 blocks in the quilt, 9 across and 11 down.  I alternated between blocks with 5 print squares and blocks with 5 solid squares.

Many of these prints are from the 1930s.  We tend to think of the 30s fabrics as pastels, but there were lots of crayon box shades then, too, especially in solid colors.
All of this has put me in a vintage mood, so I started working on this.

I bought a bag of vintage scraps at the last Elkhorn flea market.

Here's what was in it!  Lots and lots of scraps, mostly from the 1930s.

I am going really Old School on this lot.  In the foreground of this picture, you may be able to see two red plexiglass templates.  One is an equilateral triangle, and one is a right triangle.  The templates are designed to be used with a rotary cutter, but they're not very big, and I don't really like using the cutter for these small shapes.  (Blood is just so messy, and I don't want to spend the evening in the Emergency Room.)  So I'm actually Drawing Around the Templates and Cutting the Shapes with Scissors.  Not very modern of me, of course.  (Neither is sewing with a treadle.  But I digress.)
When I first learned to quilt, this was the way it was done, although our templates were not made of such nice stuff, usually just cardboard like cereal boxes.

I'm making progress!  I've got a stack of each kind of triangle, plus a pile of tiny pieces I might use for something, and a pile of shreds that need to be thrown out.  I've been listening to speeches on television while I work, but I can imagine the original owner of these scraps tracing and cutting while Benny Goodman plays on the radio, or President Roosevelt comes on for a Fireside Chat.

We have had the best of weather today, a rain shower that watered the gardens and cleared the air, and lovely summer sunshine.  August starts next week, and summer will be on the way out.

I wish you the joy of summer today, and of course the joy of quilting.

I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts today for Finish it Up Friday.

Vintage Mess (and other stuff)

I finished something!  I really didn't think it would happen this week.  I'm babysitting my 7 week old grandson, and tired is not even the word at the end of the day.  But--I made a new checkbook cover!

I really needed one.  Plus it needed to be snazzy and red, with sewing machines on it.

Here's the outside.  Fun fabric.

And best of all, it fits my checkbook and check register.  So what if I only write 10 checks a year?

In other stuff news,  here's a vintage mess.

Lots of my quilts start out this way--once upon a time there was a bag of vintage scrap pieces.  In this case, they were "squares", meaning they were not really square, of vintage prints.

The big bag is where I store my solid color scraps.  I can't believe it's gotten so full.  I think these pieces are breeding in the basement when no one is looking.  (But if that's the case, why aren't the reds and blues making more purples?  I need more purple!)

It is so much fun matching up prints and solids.

I finally had to dump out the bag on the floor of the sewing room, so I could root around for more colors.  I need more orange, more pink, and dang it more purple!

The mess is everywhere.  I had to go find more vintage scraps to cut up to go with the squares.

I'm cutting these blocks about ten at a time, and laying them out on the treadle.  It kind of reminds me of the Elves and the Shoemaker, except there are no elves piecing the blocks.  (So far.  I haven't tried leaving out plates of cookies yet.)

Wouldn't you know I'd start a new project just when I have dramatically less time.  Good thing these blocks are easy and quick to sew, whenever I have a free minute.

Here are the stacks of finished 9 patches.  The closer stack is made of blocks with 5 print and 4 solid squares, and the stack near the window is made of blocks with 5 solid and 4 print squares.  I had to trim those vintage print squares to 2.25 in. to even them up, so the blocks finish at 5.25 in.

I'm planning to set them side by side in the finished quilt.  I need 99 total, and I have about 63 done.  Not bad for a busy week.

I've been catching up on my quilt show viewing while feeding and burping the little one.  We especially like Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting. I watched one the other day with the project shown here on the cover of their magazine.  It reminded me of a quilt block I'd always wanted to make.

The photo above is from Granny Quilts, by Darlene Zimmerman.  It's not really much like the Fons and Porter quilt, except for being sort of a pinwheel.

Here's the cover of the book, just in case you want to know.

And here's my test block, done in (of course) vintage fabrics.  The directions were excellent.  Ms. Zimmerman uses my favorite rulers, the Easy Angle and the Companion Angle.  It makes an 8 in. block.  So here's another new project!  I may put this one on the back burner for a while.  It's great just knowing I have good directions.
So what direction are you going in this week?  I hope your days, and your quilts, are joyful.
I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts today for Finish it up Friday.