New and Old

Welcome to Treadlestitches!
Here's something new--Little Buddy is back!  We're babysitting three of our grandchildren while our daughter works.  This isn't really a new situation, since we've done this for years, but it's new since the virus and the birth of the new baby.  We're choosing to do this because our daughter and her family need us, but we are still being very careful of our health, only going out for essential items like groceries and wearing our masks when we go out to help protect others.

At the moment, our daughter is only working one day a week, but that may change soon.  In the meantime, it gives us a chance to get used to taking care of a new baby again.  I am so NOT used to it that I didn't even get any pictures of the littlest guy.  These two have school online when they're here, too (yes, even the three year old!) so that's been very new and "interesting".

Here's something old!  It's a UFO, finally turned into a top.  These blocks have been languishing in a basket for literally years.  Once it's quilted by our amazing quilt group volunteers, it will be donated to someone who needs it.

The pattern is Scrappy Mountain Majesties, one of the free patterns from Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville.  Click HERE to go directly to the instructions.  My blocks are larger than the ones in the pattern.  At one point I believe there were directions for using a bigger square and making this size, which finishes at 7.5" x 9.5".  (Unless I dreamed it, I don't know.)  At any rate, it's a fun block to make and a dramatic quilt.

I even included a few novelty prints--cats and bees!

There are 8 rows of 8 blocks each, but because they are rectangles, the quilt is rectangular as well.  I kind of regret a few of the fabric choices, especially where there is a lack of contrast, but I am not stressing out about it.

While making the top, I finished making my tumbler quilt rows as leaders and enders.  That's them in the basket, pinned into little sausage rolls.  It will be fun to lay them out and start putting them together.  But now what do I use for leaders and enders?

Maybe this UFO will work!  These vintage 4 patch blocks are what I call a Double UFO.  I bought the squares years ago, already cut.  I just love packets of scraps like that.  They were 1930s and 1940s prints, with stacks of solid colors.  Somebody got ready to make a quilt, and then never got around to it.  I can definitely relate!  I trimmed up what I had, added solids as necessary, and made the blocks above.  And then I let it sit.  So two of us had started this quilt, and stalled out (thus, Double UFO).  Now I've got a plan, and this time maybe I'll keep on through to finish it.  I will need to make more blocks, though.

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for the month is dark green, so I'm sewing these first.

They may not look very dark, but they are much darker than the light green row.

More stuff from the basement!  Over the years I have collected lots of unfinished block sets.  I had some sort of crazy idea of finishing ALL of them as their original makers intended. (Hilarious!)  I am finally forced to admit that this is not going to happen, even if I live to be as old as Methuselah.  I love the fabrics in these blocks, and I know they'll be more useful to me in a different form.

So I cut them into 5 in. squares.

Lots of the squares are made from scraps the original quilter sewed together to make a large enough piece.  I think this adds a little character.  Working class chic.  Waste not, want not.

I did the same thing to another set of blocks.  These huge squares were sewn together (badly!) by hand, and some of the fabrics were very poor quality.

So I sliced them up with the rotary cutter into another pile of 5 in. squares, and got rid of the bad ones.  Now they'll be easy to work with.  I'll be going through my charm square books to find some fun patterns.

The last new thing this week is this mask.  I'm trying out patterns for this style of face mask.  The first one I made was just too small (more of an A cup than a B cup).  This one fits better.  I found this yarn in my basement stash.  I remember buying it because it was on sale.  (Could that be how I ended up with so much stuff?)  It's 100 polyester, is very soft, and is similar to a cut up T shirt.  It makes good ties for a mask, but I only have it in green.
If you are local, and want some, I would be more than happy to share.

Yesterday the neighborhood elementary school had a parade of teacher's cars, which happened to come right down our street.  The teachers held signs and waved at the kids, who came out in their yards with signs thanking them.  It was a lovely celebration of the end of the school year.
We are all in this together.  We will figure it out.
Stay safe this week.  Thanks for reading.
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:
Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop
Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday
Angela at So Scrappy

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

My husband, 12-year-old grandson, and I took a trip last week to Washington, D. C. to see museums and historical sites.  Above is the rotunda of the National Museum of Natural History.

Like all quilters, I had to pack something to work on while away from my sewing machine, so I selected this UFO that I've been appliqueing off and on (mostly off) for several years.  You can see how I basted this block within an inch of its life.  The inside and the outside of the circle are basted under, and then the whole "plate" is basted to the background.  If I was working on it at home, I would just have pinned it on the background, but it is much more portable this way.  I'm less likely to lose pins or to stab the person next to me on the airplane with a misplaced pin.

Not much sewing happened the first few days.  My husband, while normally a mild-mannered man, is a drill sergeant on vacation.  We walked all over Washington, checking off boxes on his mental list.  When we finally got back to the hotel each day, I usually threw myself on the bed, barely summoning the energy to read.  (The photo above is the capitol rotunda, beautifully restored.)

The museums have lots of inspiration for quilters. This is the original Singer 1851 patent model sewing machine.  Wow!  The guys could not understand why I was so excited about it.  Sorry about the bad photo, it's in a glass case.

Here's a coverlet with a star pattern.  Sure looks like a quilt.

I think I've seen these on the internet before, as an inspiration for a modern quilt.  These are (I think!) sections of different woods, dyed to show their structure.
The Harriet Powers Bible quilt was not on display this time, but I've seen it before and it is wonderful.  Click HERE to go to a photo/description.

This is the view from our hotel window.  In the foreground are the old historic houses of Georgetown.  To the back on the left side is the famous Watergate complex.

Just had to pose with this guy, Alexander Hamilton.

We're back home now, and I did manage to finish 3 more blocks of the Dresden plate.  I took out the basting thread, pressed them, and hung them on a skirt hanger to wait til I finish the rest.

Above is my favorite "carved in stone" saying of the whole trip.  It is at the new FDR memorial.
Words to live by.

School starts in 3 days!!!
Summer must really be over.
Have a wonderful week!
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches
I'm linking up with Myra as usual at Busy Hands Quilts,  and Can I Get A Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for the first time.

Key West Butterflies

Does it count as a finished quilt if I don't have the binding sewn down yet? 
This is my butterflies quilt.  I finished the quilting, made the binding, and machine sewed it on yesterday, and will be sewing it down by hand this weekend.

(I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts today.  There's a link back at the end of the post.)

I call it Key West Butterflies because I appliqued a lot of these on a trip to Florida in 2014.  (I did a post about it called Back from Margaritaville)

Each butterfly is surrounded by a row of squares, cut from vintage fabrics.  Half of the butterflies are appliqued on white squares, and half are on blue.  They fly in different directions.

I think this orange one is my favorite.
I bought the butterflies on Ebay years ago.  They were just the butterfly shape, which had been cut out and embroidered, and the edges were basted under.  There were no backing squares.   Most of the fabrics in the butterflies are from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Here's the back!  Each of the 20 squares was quilted separately on the machine.  I used vintage fabrics for the backs and old fashioned cotton batting.

Most of the fabrics on the back are just vintage cottons, but a couple are from feedsacks.

This pink print with the enormous blueberries (?) was a skirt I bought in an antique store.

It's about time I finished this!  It has been languishing for months.
I'm looking forward to watching some PBS mysteries while I sew the binding down, and then get a label sewn on.
I'm having such a good start to this new year.  I hope you are too!

Back to Crazy Mom

Why Do I Have So Many UFOs?

 This is UFO #4.  Not a space ship, an Un-Finished Object.  Sadly, the number does not mean I only have 4 UFOs (insert maniacal laughter here).  It's just the number on the list for our quilt group's UFO challenge.

Just about every year or two, Colleen finds a UFO challenge for us, to help reduce the giant pile of neglected projects gathering dust in our homes.  (I'm just speaking from my personal experience here.  Not everybody has a giant pile.  Probably.)
This year's challenge is pretty simple.  Make a list of a maximum of 8 UFOs.  Number them.  Then come to the quilt group meeting, where Colleen will pick a number from a hat.  Work on the project with that number.
There are of course a few rules.  The project has to have been already started to get on the list.  And the project must be completely finished to count towards the prize at the end.  (Of course there's a prize!)  For each completed project, the quilt maker gets one chance toward the prize drawing.  More completed projects, more chances to win.
This started at the March meeting last week, where the #4 was drawn.  My #4 was a group of blocks that I called Four Patch Cross.  I started this project in an antique mall.  In my defense, it was already a UFO when I found it.

Here is a close up of one of the blocks.  The four patches in the corners were in a bag at the antique mall, along with cut squares.  They were mostly sewn by hand with black thread.  I added reproduction fabrics for the cross and the square in the center.  When I ran out of four patches I made more from the squares in the bag.

Sometimes I had enough for all 4 of the four patches, and sometimes I didn't.  I just did the best I could with what I had, like the previous quilt maker had done.

I am setting the blocks with a wide sashing made of shirting print, and red cornerstones.  It's sort of clunky, but I like it.

Check out my row labels--post its, pinned on.  I use these for several quilts, until they wear out.

So as I'm sewing the sashing strips for ufo#4, I realize I don't have a current leaders and enders project. 
For more on Leaders and Enders, check out books by Bonnie Hunter.  Here's a link to the latest one:
  More Adventures with Leaders and Enders

So what would be a good Leaders and Enders project?  Let's look in the scrap drawers in the closet.

Maybe I shouldn't have opened this drawer.  I am not sure I can get it shut again.  These are my 1.5 in. wide strips.  I haven't done anything with them in a long time, but  I've kind of been thinking about a log cabin quilt.

This book was in my quilt book collection; The Ultimate Half Log Cabin Book, by Sharyn Craig.  Hmm.
It wouldn't hurt to try out a block, would it?

This was fun!  I can use up lots of short strips and pieces!  I have great fabrics!

There are all sorts of interesting ways to set these blocks together.  This one is straight furrows.

Here's sunshine and shadow.

Or what about this one?

Wait a second ... What just happened?
I have 10 of these little blocks made, and I still haven't finished the sashing for UFO #4!

I am really having a good time, though.

Have a good time this week.

Just A Sampling

This is not my first quilt.  My first quilt is in a box in the basement.  I'm not sure what I'm keeping it for.  It's made from large scraps from clothes I sewed for myself in the 1970s.  The 100% cotton batting is horribly lumped.  And weirdly, I'm not sure if I can ever throw it out. 
This is my third quilt.  I made another scrap quilt on my own first (pretty bad, but no lumping since I used a blanket for batting) before I sought professional help and took a class at a quilt shop.

As you might be able to tell from the colors, this quilt came from the 1980s.  Peach and brown and green.  The style of the quilt is what we now call a sampler.

This is the book my teacher used--The Sampler Quilt, by Diana Leone, first published in 1980.  I took my class in 1985, but didn't finish the quilt until 1988.  Each week in class we learned a new technique, then we went home and made the block.  We used templates, which we made from plastic or cardboard.  We pieced and quilted by hand.

We did this quilt-as-you-go style, quilting each block separately.  You might be able to see the seam in the pale peach sashing above.  That was the boundary between the blocks.  Each block was surrounded by sashing, layered with a large backing square and poly batting, and quilted by hand.  I enjoyed making the quilt, but I really wanted to make "real" quilts.  You know, the kind where you only use one block pattern.  I decided this would be my last sampler.

And it was, for a while.  About 30 years.

Then I won 25 blocks made from 1930s fabrics at a quilt group meeting.  Well, what else was there to do with them?  I added some actual old blocks from my orphan block pile to make 30 total.

Can you pick out the old block in this photo?  (Hint--it's appliqued.)
I made this quilt with the quilt-as-you-go method, too, but this time I machine quilted the blocks.  It didn't take me 3 years to get it done, either.
Samplers are fun to make, and really are a good learning experience for new quilters.  In my volunteer work with the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts &Fiber Arts, I have seen many, many samplers made in the 1970s and 1980s.  This was the first quilt many people made, their first step into the amazing world of quilting.

In the past, quilts of many patterns were made, but were not necessarily called samplers.  The term sampler comes from embroideries, done to teach a young girl her stitches and sometimes her alphabet at the same time.
According to quilt historian Barbara Brackman's classic book, Clues in the Calico, when the block style became popular in the 1840s, quilts of multiple different blocks began to be made.  In the early years, they were often appliqued album quilts, either made by one person or by a group of friends.  The famous Baltimore Album quilts are of this type.  Later, when applique was less fashionable, friendship quilts were more often made of pieced blocks.  The ones we call samplers were made with many different block patterns by the same person, not by a group of friends.
Many quilt historians believe some quilters kept a collection of various different blocks as a way of remembering the patterns.  The quilter might see a block she liked at a friend's home or a quilt show, and make up a block herself.  She could then keep the block itself as a pattern.  As you can imagine, a person could end up with quite a lot of blocks.  Either the quilter herself, or her heirs after her death, might make these test blocks into a quilt.  This quilt could then be called a "pattern quilt".  Quilts of this type often have blocks of several different sizes.

I found one of these sets of blocks at a flea market several years ago.  

 Stuffed into this lid-less basket were quilt blocks of all types and sizes.

Many of the blocks had slips of paper pinned to them, with the name of the block on them.

This one says "3 Saw Tooth".  I have seen it called Saw Tooth Star before.  Wonder what the 3 is about.

She called this one Devil's Puzil (how's that for phonetic spelling?).

Some of the blocks had templates pinned to them.  This is the back of a square template, made from a 1907 calendar.

Here's the back of another template.  It appears to be a page from a high school commencement program.

This one is from the same source.  It says, "Wealth may seek us.  Wisdom must be sought."  Words to live by.
I don't know if I'll make my antique block collection into a quilt.  Some of the blocks are not in good shape, so couldn't be used.  Some of them are stained, probably from the basket they were stored in.  But it might be fun to put the good blocks together like a "puzil".

It's fun to look for sampler quilts (or any other kind of quilt!) on the Quilt Index.  Here are a couple of antique samplers.

This is Hattie's quilt, and is probably a friendship quilt, so not technically a sampler.  It was made in Nebraska in 1890.

This sampler top was made in the same time period, but in Massachusetts.
Want to see more?  Click on the link, and search for quilts.
Quilt Index

And finally, this is my all time favorite sampler:


Yeah, I've got a weakness for chocolates.  I do like having the map included, so I know which ones I'm getting.
I hope your week ahead is full of quilting fun.