All Kinds of Yellow

June is yellow month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I have all my blocks done!  I don't usually manage to do these so early in the month.
First, the houses.

Here's a cheery little cherry house, must be in Door County.  I had enough Badger fabric left for the sky.

This one is a quilter's house.  For some reason, there is a duckie in the doorway.

Butterflies and whales live here.  Not sure how, but that's their problem.

Every neighborhood has to have that wild and crazy house.

This house is made of honey.  A bear scout is apparently watching over it from the roof.

Let me tell you 'bout the birds and the bees...the bee house, that is, with birds on the roof and butterflies in the sky and on the door.

And lastly, more bugs!  Happy, smiling bugs!  NOT the kind that lurk under the sink.

I am loving this project more every month!
I do confess to being sad when I run out of a particular fabric.  Oh, well, they'll make more.

Here are this month's Buckeye Beauty blocks:

Four together...

and four more.  I actually could set them like this.  Hmmm...

Most of these blocks were made from 1930s reproduction fabrics, like the one above.

This super-pale block is made from yellow feedsacks.

And this block is a hybrid--feedsack for the triangles and repro for the squares.

Many, many thanks to the soscrappy blog for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and all the fun we're having.

In other news, I've managed to get some gardening done on days my baby grandson is not here.

There are tomato and kale plants in pots on the porch.  Do you see the fabric strip?  I've tied the tomato plant to the wire cage with a strip from a rag.  My grandmother used to do it this way.  I always feel close to her when I work in the garden.

Have a wonderful, quilt-filled week!
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

I'm linking up with Myra at Busy Hands Quilts and Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts.  Join the party!

Summer Stars

It's summer in southeastern Wisconsin.  Winters here are long, but the beautiful summer tries hard to make up for it.  This is our lilac bush, out by the driveway.  (The blossoms look white here, but they are light, well, lilac-colored.)

This week I've been spending some time sitting at the kitchen table, binding my Summer Stars quilt.  Most of the week was sunny, and I even had the windows open in the afternoon.

I finished the binding around midnight last night, just couldn't stop til it was finally done.  I blogged about this quilt back in April (see post HERE) when I was quilting it.  As usual, I pieced it on my Singer treadle and quilted it, in two sections, on my electric Pfaff.

The star points were leftovers from the first mystery quilt I ever did online--Bonnie Hunter's Celtic Solstice.  These points were meant for the pieced border, but I changed the size of the quilt AND ran out of orange, so that left these pieces without a home.
I made them into stars with some hsts, added the alternate blocks, and finished with a three strip border and 6 in. stars in the corners.

The alternate blocks were made with a light fabric I bought more than 10 years ago, and a more recent repro I bought yards of on sale.  There's not much left of it now, I have loved it so much.

It's hard to see in the upper photo, but this one shows the quilting in the plain blocks better, mainly because you can still see the pencil marks.

It's not a big quilt, not even a regular twin size, but it is big enough to curl up under.

Here it is in my husband's office.  He's a retired chemist, hence the microscopes.

The quilt is done, we're back to gardening again, and I'm happy dancing all over the house.  I'm using the rain barrel to water the plants, and still admiring the design painted on it by a local high school student.

I think it's going to be a good year for raspberries!  Like all other gardeners, I live on hope.
I'm wishing hope and happiness for all this week.
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Don't forget the linky party at Crazy Mom Quilts!

The Taming of the Scraps

I love scrap quilts.  In fact, I just plain love scraps.   I love them so much that I actually buy other people's scraps.

For example, here's a bag I bought at a recent quilt show.  As you can see, it cost a whole $2.00.

This is what it looked like, dumped out on the floor.

Then I laid out the pieces...

and gloated over all the great stuff in here.  I might be a little cracked when it comes to scraps.

There's only one problem with accumulating scraps.  Somehow or another they have to go from this

to quilts.  They have to be tamed, and shaped into parts to be further cut and sewn.
So that's what I've been doing this week.

I started by straightening up a bit, and doing a little organizing by categories.  For instance, I sorted them into bright colored scraps, the reproduction 1930s, the 1800s repros, the plaids, etc.

Then I put a subset of the scraps into a small basket.  Whenever I had time, I pressed and cut what was in the basket, until it was empty.  I started with bright colors.  Shown above are the plaids, which I will work on this coming week.
I've tried other systems, like working for 15 min. at a time, etc., but this seemed to work better for me.
Here's what I got done:

These are strips ranging from 5 in. wide on the left to 1.5 in. wide on the far right.  In between are 4.5 in., 3.5 in., and 2 in.
So where are the 2.5 in. strips?

Here they are, two big stacks.  Another bag I bought at the quilt show was full of 3 in. cut strips.  I trimmed those down to 2.5 because I know I'll use them if they're that size.

I almost filled up a shoebox.

When I'm cutting strips, I also cut squares if the scraps are small.  These are 5 in., 4.5 in., 3.5 in., 2.5 in., and 2 in.  The rectangles are 2.5 x 4.5.  I've got a project in mind for them.
So now I've got parts to sew with, and this is what I'm doing with some of them.  There are pieces here of 3 different quilts.

Now I need a strategy for focusing on my projects.  Any suggestions?
Have a great week, everybody.
I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts and Busy Hands Quilts this week.

It's a Green World

Rainbow Scrap Challenge time!  Just in time for (nearly) the end of the month, I've finished my blocks for May, in scraps of green.  First, the little houses.

Some of the blocks are kind of plain, although this one does have dinosaurs in the sky...

And this one is sweet enough to give you a cavity.

Two of the houses have frogs, like this one who is waving and saying hi...

and this house is totally made up of frogs staring at you.  Not creepy at all.

Still on the reptiles/amphibians theme, here's the turtle house.

My favorite this month is the ladybug house.

After all the cats in the other houses I've made, I needed to have some dog fabric in here somewhere.  There are rabbits in the sky, and the door is a cat print without any visible cats.

Last but not least, I had to work the Packers in.  I think there's some kind of law in Wisconsin about respect for the Packers.  It has nothing to do with how well they're playing, the Pack is beloved always.
I really had to hunt to find green 1930s repro fabrics and/or feedsacks for the Buckeye Beauty blocks  Here they are:

Some of these greens are very pale, but I think they'll contrast well with some of the brighter blocks in other colors.  At least, I hope so.

This is my favorite block using the repro fabrics.

My all-time favorite feedsack is in the large triangles in this block.  It has a Hawaiian theme.  Can you see where it spells out Waikiki? 

Here's a bad closeup of another part of this feedsack, pieced into a different block.  This time there's a surfer! 
For years I just hoarded this feedsack, thinking it was too precious to use.  Finally, I'm over that!  I have moved on to Cut It Up and Use It Now.

Once I got my RSC blocks done for the month, something came over me, and I started piecing scrap triangles into these blocks.  I don't have a pattern, and I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but it's fun using up scraps.  I always need to have something to piece during my baby grandson's naps.

How are you RSC projects coming along?  I have loved reading about them in the weekly linky parties.  Does anybody ever end up with too many blocks?  I'm kind of thinking that could happen to me.
Cheers to all this week,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Choose Happy

I'm taking today's title from words printed on fabric.  It's not even grammatically correct, as my English-major daughter would point out.  It should probably say, "Choose happiness", or Choose to be happy."  But the grammar doesn't really matter (don't tell my daughter I said that!).  It's the sentiment that counts.  I used the choose happy fabric as sashing in this quilt.

The pattern for the quilt came from this magazine, American Patchwork & Quilting, June 2017 issue.  I don't know if you've noticed, but they are including a quilt pattern specifically meant for charity/donation quilts in each issue so far this year. 

The column is called Sew Giving, and is hidden in the back of the magazine, after the stapled-in pattern sheets.  The pattern I used is called Positive Effect, and was designed by Amanda Niederhauser (jedicraftgirl.com).

Here's the original quilt from the article. 
As soon as I saw this pattern, I decided I had to make it.  (Does this ever happen to you?)  No matter what else I had going on in the sewing room, this was gonna get pieced.

I liked this quilt because:
1.  I could use 5 in. squares, which I had been cutting from some of my scraps, and 3.5 in strips, which seem to be multiplying in their shoebox.
2.  The blocks were big (12 in. finished), so I wouldn't need very many to make a good sized quilt.
3.  It was easy as pie.  Or actually easier.

Some of my favorite blocks are:

Cats!!!  Cat is my baby grandson's favorite word.  He says it all day long.  ALL DAY LONG.

My grandmother used to recite a poem about a purple cow.  This reminds me of that poem, even though the background of the center square, and not the cow, is purple.
"I've never seen a purple cow,
I never hope to see one.
But this I can say anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one."
I looked it up (thank you, Wikipedia!).  The author was Gelett Burgess, and it was published in 1895.  I changed it slightly to the version my Gran taught us.

Here's a glimpse of two blocks.  The one in the foreground is so insane I had to lie down after making it.

I sewed these blocks up during my grandson's naptimes, and it didn't take long to get 20 of them. 

The directions were good, and I liked the pattern, but I always have to change at least a few things.
Here's what I changed:
1.  I used bright colored prints and novelty fabrics to make the blocks.
2.  The original used the sashing fabric in the center of each block.  I used the centers to add another print.
3.  I added cornerstones in the sashing to give the top a punch of color.  Doing so used up some 2.5 in. squares from my "collection".  (Don't worry, I have LOTS more.)
4.  I added a 4 in. finished border on the outside.

I took this photo while auditioning border fabrics.  This wild Southwest fabric won!

So here's the top, all done and ready to go to our volunteer long-arm quilters.  With the added border, it measures roughly 66 in. x 80 in., and fits nicely on a twin bed.

So thanks to APQ for including patterns for those of us who sew for donation.  As far as I can tell from a short search of their web site (allpeoplequilt.com) these patterns are only available in the physical magazine.  If I'm wrong about that, let me know.

This week, I'm going to do all my usual things, like laundry and grocery shopping and babysitting and cleaning, and, of course, quilting.  And I'm going to choose happy in all the things I do.
I'm doing this because attitude really is everything, and being open to happiness really does encourage joy.  And not just because some fabric told me to.

I hope you can choose happy this week too.
Cheers,
Sylvia