Two Donations, Twelve Blocks, and a Day at the Shore

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

It's a lovely sunny morning, the first day of Labor Day Weekend here in the U.S.  I'm getting back on track after having been on vacation, finishing these two little quilts for donation.

The first one is an I Spy.  From the look of it, you might think I pieced it, (you know how I love novelty prints!), but I didn't!  Both tops came from a generous lady, who met our own Nancy Queen of Scraps at a thrift shop.  They got to talking, and the lady had made dozens of tops during the pandemic (we can all relate, can't we?).  She ended up donating the tops to our group to finish and donate to charities.  I did the quilting and binding on these two.

It was so much fun to work on!  Every square (72 total) was different, and lots of them were prints I had never seen before.

For sure, there had to be a Green Bay Packers square!

The back is a 1930s print with toys, and the binding is a sewing print, both from my Endless Stash.  More novelty prints equals more fun!

The second quilt is a little calmer.  Our generous quilter made 4 patches in two shades of blue, paired with alternate blocks cut from a fabric with ducks, bunnies, rocking horses, and a bear (just one bear).

I think the alternate fabric comes from the 1980s-1990s, it looks very familiar.  The quilt will be a nice addition to a nursery.

The back is another 1930s repro print of toys on light blue.  I quilted a 3 in. grid with serpentine stitch, and added a tan binding to go with the cute animals.  

I'm not sure exactly which charity will get these quilts, but I'm sure they will be loved.

In other news, aqua!

Aqua is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for September.  (Can you believe it's September already??)  Until I started participating in the RSC, I didn't use aqua much.  I had a problem with it.  It's a mix of blue and green, right, but some fabrics look more blue and some more green, so it can be hard to define.  Are they blue, or green, or aqua?  For some reason, this stressed me out.  I don't stress about it anymore, I just relax and enjoy all the colors, and really look for aqua in stores and sales.

You can't go wrong with rainbows and sunshine!

And happy dinosaurs!

Now for something completely ridiculous.  Why do I pile stuff up so high you can't even see the basket?  And how has this not fallen over?  I'm using solid scraps in a quilt I'm making with my grandson Buddy (more on that as we progress), so I finally noticed this problem.

Whew, that's better.  One tiny mess straightened up.  This basket only holds smaller pieces of solids now.  The strips are filed in the drawers, the larger yardage goes in the basement, and I can actually see what I have.  (I might need to buy some red, don't you think?  And maybe yellow?)

 Our youngest grandsons had a day off school and preschool yesterday, so we spent the morning at the Lake Michigan shore.  The water is far too cold for swimming (I think), but we had fun wading and looking for interesting rocks.  I found a couple of small pieces of "beach glass", really just pieces of old beer bottles made smooth by the waves. 

We found this driftwood structure someone had piled up.  The boys decided it was a house and had fun playing in it.  Buddy kept dragging more logs over to make it bigger.

We had a picnic lunch and the boys played on the playground.  Little Guy had a very happy day, can you tell?  Sorry about the photo quality, the sunlight was intense.

Buddy is great at posing for photos, even though I'm not great at taking them!  

If you've ever taken kids near water, you can guess both of them got their clothes wet.  I brought dry shorts for them, but didn't bring shirts, so when Buddy got hit by a big wave and got completely soaked, he had to wear his sweatshirt as a shirt.  Next time, shirts!  And socks!

On vacation in Oxford a few weeks ago, this motto of the University was everywhere:  Dominus Illuminatio Mea, which means The Lord is My Light.  If I had a Latin motto, I think it would be Tempus Fugit, usually translated as Time Flies.  

Time is always flying.  Let's enjoy it while we may.

Thanks for reading!

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with these lovely bloggers:

Angela at So Scrappy

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Last Yellow Blocks, Museum Stuff, and the One Dollar Quilts

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

 The last Saturday of August is here already.  Summer fun has been taking up more of my time, but at least the yellow blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge are done.  Above are the 16 patch blocks.

This one is my favorite!  

I figured out why I started making 5 every month.  If I make 5 of 8 colors (leaving out pink, I made a whole baby quilt of the pink ones), I'll have 40 blocks at the end of the year.  That could make 2 baby quilts of 20 blocks each, or I could just make 2 more blocks and have 42 for a bigger quilt. 

I'm making 12 each of these Uneven Nine Patch/Puss in the Corner blocks each month.  I have absolutely no idea how many quilts or what size I'll be making.  Just winging it!

The big annual sale at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts was a great place to find cool scraps.  I got several small pieces of Dr. Seuss character prints.  I've always loved Dr. Seuss.  His wacky stories have delighted readers for generations.

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish!

This was the last week of summer vacation for our youngest grandkids.  Buddy earned a free Milwaukee Public Museum admission through the library's summer reading program, so we took both boys and went there on Wednesday.  They're posing here in front of a pretend street car.  We all had a great day.

My husband and I love going to museums, especially when on vacation in far away places.  While walking through the Pitt River Museum in Oxford, I spotted this bit of patchwork in one of the cases.  It's a pieced Parcheesi board, hand made from cotton fabric, that folds up for storage.  This museum does cases by theme, this one is games of the world.

I enjoy seeing and learning about all sorts of things in a museum, but "quilty" objects always catch my eye.  This is a female mummy in the Ashmolean Museum (also in Oxford) with traditional cloth wrappings that might look to us like log cabin patchwork.  The portrait of her face is original and was painted on linen.  It has been painstakingly restored.  (Click HERE for more information.)

What would you think if you saw this price tag on a quilt?  Would you grab it, pay, and run home?  That's what my eldest daughter did when she found not one but TWO quilts priced $1.00 each at a rummage sale.  And then she gave them to me!

Here's the first one.  Barbara Brackman identifies this pattern as Baby Bunting, and it was available from the Ladies Art Company from the 1890s through 1926.  I estimate the quilt to be from this period as well, judging from the fabrics.

It's hand pieced and hand quilted.  Can you imagine cutting out all those tiny little triangles?  It must have been a labor of love.  I believe the triangles were once a brighter red that has faded (very common for turn of the century non-Turkey red).  I'm a little confused about the tannish brown, which is not a usual color for the time period.  Has it also faded, possibly from green?

But, the quilting thread is brown.  The only damage besides the fading is the narrow binding, which is also brown.  Maybe it was red and brown all along?  Hm, it's a mystery.  

Less mysterious is this sweet old Double Nine Patch from the 1930s.  The nine patches are set with yellow, which makes it on theme for the RSC today, and the alternate blocks are a lovely lavender.

The blocks are about 8 in. square, or less, and the tiny squares are an inch or under.  The fabrics are scraps typical of the time period.  It's hand pieced, except for the borders which were added by machine, and is hand quilted.

The quilting has helped to keep the quilt together despite heavy use.  There is lots of fading and damage to the fabrics, especially in the lavender alternate squares and the border.  It has been rebound in recent years.

Neither of these quilts are museum pieces, but I think they're worth more than a dollar!  Many thanks to my thoughtful sharp-eyed daughter.

Lastly, here's something I've been working on instead of quilting!  Hubby and I really like jigsaw puzzles.  We leave them out on the kitchen table and add pieces as we walk by or after the kids go home.  I bought this one in an Oxford bookstore, it came in the cloth pouch to the right.  Only 500 pieces, but it was tough with all those colors, and it was possible to fit pieces in the wrong place!  When it was done we felt a real sense of accomplishment.

I hope you feel that way this week, even about something as silly as a puzzle!  Happy quilting!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

A Small Finish, Yellow Blocks, and Glad to be Back

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Here's where I was last week--Oxford, England!  Libraries, museums, and book stores, oh my! We had a wonderful vacation, but I won't bore you with all the details.  I might include a few sewing/quilting related things here and there, but no travelog, I promise.  (BTW, the photo above is of the Radcliffe Camera, which was built in the 1700s to house the Radcliffe Science Library.  Camera in this sense just means "room".)

Here's the small finish, this baby quilt for donation.  It measures 42 in. square, and is based on a pattern in this book:  The Big Book of Baby Quilts.

There are lots of cute patterns in the book, as I'm sure you can tell from all the post it notes I have stuck in it.  Here's the pattern, which they call Over the Rainbow.

I changed it a little, of course, as I almost always do.

The blocks are the same, but I arranged the blocks in this layout by color.  The blocks that look pink are actually orange in real life.

My quilt has only one border, this cute ocean print with whales and fish.  I had just enough of this little scrap for this project.  (Don't you love it when it works out like that?)

There are scraps of other ocean-themed prints in the blocks.  Sea horses, colorful fish, whales, anchors, etc. make their appearance.

Plus pirates!  Arr, matey!  I hope it goes to a kid who loves the ocean.

August is yellow month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  Lots of yellows came out to play this week in these Bricks blocks.

This parrot fabric has been in LOTS of my quilts since I bought it while on a retreat.  I can't believe there's any left, I'm always so glad to find a few more scraps of it.

Yellow month for the RSC had me pulling out fabric from everywhere, looking for novelty prints.

Did you notice this one?  It's sushi!  Can you believe I have a whole yard of it?  This is the first time I've used it.  I don't think kids will have any idea what it is, but their parents may be puzzled by what it's doing in a quilt.  Looks delicious, especially the salmon!

After more than a week away, we're adjusting to the time again, and glad to be back.  

We really missed our little guys.  Buddy is sporting some cool sunglasses.

And Little Guy is testing out the noises he can make with kitchen stuff.  Yeah, back to normal!

Finally, a little inspiration.  I took this photo of a Rainbow Zebra crossing in Oxford, near West Gate Shopping Center.  The center is the usual black and white crosswalk, and the sides have been painted in rainbow colors.  The rainbow supports LGBT+ rights, and the center remains black and white to help visually impaired people see the crossing clearly.  A great compromise, I thought!  And possibly an image that could somehow work on a quilt?

Have a lovely week, everyone!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

Happy About Yellow

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

August is yellow month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and that means it's time to make yellow Happy Blocks.  My light novelty fabrics were going begging, so I've been using them for the centers, with the yellow strips surrounding them.

Yellow always makes me happy, but it can be hard to find nice yellow prints, so I was glad to uncover these in the Endless Stash.  I used any light prints for the middle that had something yellow in them.

Here's my favorite, a sewing themed print, with a nice yellow iron.  After lots of problems with irons in the past, I never take mine for granted any more!  I give her a little pat before plugging in and encourage her to hang in there, especially during a long cutting session.  Irons are quilters' friends!

The Happy Blocks are making me happy!  Here's more happy stuff.

Our Little Guy got his cast off!  He's so glad to be able to play in water again, especially since it's been so hot here.  He and Buddy were making pretend "coral reefs" and shark habitats.  And sometimes dunking their feet in the water.

The pickle relish is done for the year.  I always love to see the jars lined up on the shelf, ready for mixing into potato salad, tuna salad, egg salad, etc.

I almost forgot what a pain it is to pit cherries!  It took all weekend, off and on.  But now the cherry jam is done, there are two quarts of cherries in the freezer for pies, and I even got a pie baked.  (No picture, we ate it right away!)

All these fruits and vegetables came from the big Farmer's Market in West Bend last Saturday.  I also got peaches there from Michigan, that started out kind of hard but softened up in a paper bag on the kitchen counter. 

 I made them into what I call Peach Cobbler, pictured above.  There are lots of different yummy desserts called cobbler, of course.  To those of us from Indiana, a cobbler is a square or rectangular version of a pie, with a fruit filling, in which the crust can be patched and has no need to be pretty.  (Martha Stewart might need smelling salts if she saw it, sorry, Martha.)  Buddy liked it as much as we do, but Little Guy was not a fan.

What's making you happy this week?  I hope life is going well for you, and our quilting hobby is adding an extra spark of fun.

Here's another happy thought--we can check out all the quilty links below!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Sarah at Can I Get A Whoop Whoop

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday