Frogs, Cats, Chips, and Swatches

Welcome to Treadlestitches! 

It's been harder to adjust to being in a different time zone for vacation than I expected.  We came home a week ago yesterday, and my sleep cycle is still not completely back to normal.  I'm hoping to get straightened out this weekend.

Meanwhile, I had this little quilt more than halfway done before we left, so it wasn't too much work to get it finished.

Can you see the frogs?  This was a big print I bought at a rummage sale, and I didn't want to cut it up too small.  The poison dart frogs are very realistic, and I'm sure some kid will enjoy them.

I've used this pattern several times when I had a large print that I couldn't figure out what to do with.  It's a free pattern from Quilts for Kids (Click HERE for the pattern page.  When you click on the pattern title a PDF will download). It's just a 4 patch with alternate blocks so not difficult at all. 

 Did you catch the orange accents?  I added them just because I liked orange with the dark blue, but I'll claim credit for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for August.

The back is this grasshopper print.  I got it at the same rummage sale.  There's even some orange in it.

 Speaking of orange, orange cats!  I could almost makes these blocks in my sleep, now that I've made so many. It's so much fun choosing fabrics for these silly kitties.

My favorite fabrics to use are cat prints, like the one above.  It even has a tuxedo cat like my big buddy Snicklefritz!

I'm only making 4 potato chip blocks every month, so it wasn't too tough to sew them up.  Most of the rectangles were already cut.  I do admit to doing some un-sewing when I put the light ones in the center by mistake.

Do you know that saying, "Wherever you go, there you are"?  Wherever I go, I'm still a quilter, and still seeing things from that perspective.

For example, this:

Lovely squares in bright colors are on this enclosure in the Vienna airport.  I wanted to know what was inside.  It's a place for smokers to get a few last puffs before a flight. The idea is that the cigarette smoke is contained there and goes out through ceiling vents.  However, the door is constantly opening and closing as people enter and exit, letting the smoke out into the rest of the airport, so I think they need to rework the idea.  Still pretty though.

On one of our last days in Vienna, we went to the Museum of Applied Arts, abbreviated MAK.  There were some amazing exhibits of all sorts, from "architecture" at protest movements like Occupy Wall Street to Art Deco furniture and glassware.  (Click HERE for their web site.)

Fabric design is definitely an applied art!

How's this for orange?  This is a fabric design created on paper in 1927.  I don't know if it was ever made onto cloth, but I would be happy to buy a yard or two!

This one by the same artist was even better!  Sort of pre-Kaffe Fassett.

I was so happy to see these guys when I got home!  They're posing in a cardboard jeep at Vacation Bible School.  We've been having fun enjoying the end of the summer.

I hope you're having fun whatever you are doing this week.  Happy Quilting!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

 

 

 

 

 

Windmills, Strings, and Grocery Chains

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  How are your projects coming along?

Our vacation in Vienna, Austria, was wonderful (a few photos below) but as always I'm glad to come back to my quiet regular life.   That includes quilting, of course!

I made this little Windmill quilt before we left, from a pattern shared at our quilt group by our Block of the Month leader Nancy Queen of Scraps.  It's an easy pattern using 2.5 in. x 4.5 in. rectangles in light and dark to make 8 in. finished blocks.

The border is an aqua print (last month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge color!) printed with colorful and probably fanciful poison dart frogs.  I bought several frog print remnants at a yard sale last year, no idea what the lady was making with it.

What about this wild print on the back?  It was also a second hand purchase, this time at the big museum sale I'm always talking about.  I get a big chunk of the fabric I use for kid quilts from that sale every year.

There are even a few orange blocks in the little quilt for this month's RSC color.

I really love orange!  Pulling out the big chunks of orange scraps is as far as I've gotten on August's color, but I'm looking forward to getting started.

Meanwhile, I've got some of last month's aqua blocks to finish up, like these string blocks.  I'll probably make some more since I have lots of strings to use up.

Oops!  Two of last month's grocery chain strips are pretty short.  I make them by sewing small scraps on receipts from the grocery store.  We were stocked up pretty well in July plus I bought veggies from the farmer's market, and then we were out of town, so I didn't buy as much.

Here's a little orange, from a garden in Vienna.  All these lovely flowers were surrounding a fountain near the natural history museum.

So that's the segue into a few vacation photos! 

We stayed in the city center of Vienna, near St. Stephen's Cathedral, which was begun around 1160 a.d.  The roof tiles are hexagons, which as a quilter I enjoyed very much. 

This is the view outside our hotel window.  The architecture in this part of Vienna is just stunning.  Even ordinary shops or offices might have statues and gargoyles if they're in an old building.  I admit to doing a lot of gaping and pointing.

We did most of our sightseeing in museums.  I'll add a few other pictures in later posts.

Isn't this adorable?  These mosaic designs were made by children with the help of the Kiwanis Club of Vienna.  We happened upon this in Stadt Park, the main city park.  All four sides of this column are covered with the mosaics.  It makes me think of how important all kinds of artistic expression are to all of us humans, young and old and in between.

Look what I found in our park here in Wisconsin!  I took this photo of the boys before we left.  We've been having fun outside in the good weather.  Can't wait to see them again on Monday!

Good luck with orange this month if you are participating in the RSC!  I hope all your projects are going smoothly.  And if not, put them in time out and do something fun!  Have a great week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

 

The Seersucker Quilt

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

The quilt guild I belong to does a lot of charity work.  We make quilts of all sizes, plus many other items like walker bags and wheelchair bags for nursing homes, bucket hats and port pillows for cancer patients, toiletry bags for foster children and unhoused people, flannel hearts for NICU babies, and recently book pillows for kids.  Because of this work people frequently give us fabric to make these items.  All kinds of fabric.  Including seersucker.

As you may know, seersucker is a light weight puckery fabric, meant to be worn in summer and/or hot climates.  It has gone in and out of fashion for more than a hundred years, and was originally made of 100% cotton, although now it's usually a blend.  Men's suits are still sometimes made of it.  I have had blouses and dresses of seersucker, and made dresses for my daughters with it when they were children.  Due to the puckered weave it doesn't need ironing.  By the way, the weird name comes from Persian for milk and sugar.  (Click HERE for the Wikipedia article.)

Can you make quilts from seersucker?  I had never thought of using seersucker to make a quilt until I saw a kit cut by our charity committee at a guild meeting.  It was for a baby quilt, which of course is right up my alley, so I decided to try it.  The squares were already cut, so I arranged them in identical vertical rows and offset every other row.

Then I trimmed off the top and bottom like this.  I didn't have any seersucker yardage for a border, and I wasn't sure about sewing anything else to it, so I left it like this.  The sewing was simple, and I didn't need to iron anything.

Here's the back, a regular 100% cotton print.  The batting is polyester.  I bound it with the same fabric.

I admit, I am a self-described cotton snob.  I was nervous about working with poly cotton, since some of them are flimsy and pill at the first washing, but the seersucker worked out okay.

And just look what was at the meeting this week--a kit cut from cute ocean-themed seersucker!  Yep, this one came home with me too.  I'm not worried about using it anymore, but I need to remember to turn down the iron temperature if I need to press.

I would LOVE to know if anybody else has made a seersucker quilt.  I don't think I've ever even seen one.

Aqua month progresses on!  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month had me pulling out  scraps to go with the parts department strips and rectangles this week.  

It was a good chance to use some Dr. Seuss fabric I've been saving.

More 3-D flying geese!

In other news, I attended a meeting of the Wisconsin Quilt Study Group last Saturday, held at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts in Cedarburg.

Our topic was white work quilts, which were amazing but sadly don't photograph well.  We always have show and tell of member's new acquisitions, and I snapped a photo of this amazing antique quilt.  Such tiny triangles, perfectly hand pieced, with lovely quilting!  The background is a light yellow, it's not showing up well on my monitor.  It dates to the 1930s or so.

These beautiful hollyhocks were on the museum grounds, with the old lambing shed behind them.

In even more other news, we had a birthday party this week.  Our eldest grandson turned 19!  He's the tall guy with the awesome hair, shown here with his family.  Buddy and Little Guy miss him now that he's moved into an apartment.  I can hardly believe how fast he's growing up.

At my age, years go by quickly anyway, but the summer just seems to zoom past!  How are we nearly to the end of July already?  

Have a lovely week, everyone!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday 

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap 

Beep! Beep!

Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

 

Isn't summer wonderful?  We've got blue skies, green grass,  and a fresh new quilt on the clothesline.  This one is a Double 4 Patch.  I call it Beep Beep.

The border is a cute light blue print I bought second hand at the museum sale in June.  The light fabric is also a transportation print.  A kid who loves cars and trucks will appreciate this one, I hope!  It will be donated locally.

Each block has 4 bright print squares (cut at 2.5 in.), 4 light print small squares (also 2.5 in.) and 2 larger squares (cut 4.5 in.).  The blocks are 8 in. finished.

This antique quilt was my inspiration.  The old standard 4 patch looked different with everything in the block being light except the four small squares.  I set the blocks side by side instead of separated by alternate blocks.

The back is this train print in mostly blue.  I found it in my 1930s repro bin, and put it right to work.  The binding is a solid blue.

Be careful on the roads, everybody!  Beep beep!

It's been fun hunting through the aqua scraps for this months Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.  First are the 4 potato chip blocks, made from rectangles cut 2 in. x 3.5 in.  I have plenty of aqua, which I was surprised about.  It was harder hunting up light rectangles that looked right with it.  I also had far more greenish aqua than blueish.  I only made 1 blueish block, the other 3 are more greenish.

Here are the Aquakitties!  Does that sound like super heroes?  I really LOVE making these blocks!

Two of my favorites are the cat print (of course!) and the frog print.

I'm still working through scraps I bought at the big museum sale, like this one modeled by my adorable grandson aka Little Guy.  Looks like the original owner of this piece was into fussy cutting! 

The baby blue fabric is an adorable baby print.  There were two of those cut out pieces Little Guy was showing off in the scrap bag I bought.  I turned them into these strips, squares, and rectangles, and now they're stored away in the parts department.  They'll be ready when needed.

Summer is going by so fast!  I want to enjoy it as much as possible.  

So I've set some goals.

1.  Play outside more.

2.  Go barefoot in the grass.

3.  Eat watermelon til the juice runs down my chin.

4.  Run through the sprinkler with the kids!   

and

5.  Sew inside in the air conditioning if it's too hot out.

What are your goals for July?  I'd love to know!

Have a great week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

The Amazing Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge Queen Angela at SoScrappy

 Scrap Quilter Extraordinaire Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Check out these great blogs!

Summertime Blues (and Aqua)

Welcome to Treadlestitches! 

Is it summer where you live?  Here in Wisconsin, you can't get much more "summer" than yesterday, the 4th of July.  Happy Independence Day, America!

Hanging on the clothesline today is a child's quilt, 36 in. x 42 in., freshly finished and ready to give away.

All sorts of bugs and other creepy crawlies are enjoying the good here weather too. Even on the border of the quilt!  The bug print came from a rummage sale last summer.  The colorful scraps all came from the box of 2.5 in. x 3.5 in. rectangles.  I used 90 of them in the blocks, and probably still have enough to make 2 more quilts.  Scraps are forever lol.

I don't know an official name for this block.  (If you do, please tell me!)  I call the 2.5 in. x 3.5 in. rectangles Little Bricks, so I named this block Little Bricks Ladder.  I'm hoping there's a cooler name somewhere in quilt blog land.  The three bricks are sewn together, and then 2 in. x 6.5 in. white strips are sewn on each long side.  Easy peasy.

Here's the back, made of two different light prints.  I'm trying not to be so fussy about the backs, I just need to use up what I've already got, and both these prints are cute.  Kids are probably not going to care about this anyway.  The quilting is a 3 in. grid in serpentine stitch.
 

Now that it's July, I have finally caught up with June's Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month.  These are my 1800s repro hexagons.  I absolutely adore indigo blue, and it's getting harder to find it in stores.
 

What if I added in the red ones for a patriotic look?  Hey, this would make a great quilt!  But I've already got mine planned to include ALL the colors.  I didn't start this project at the beginning of the year, so I'm catching up on the RSC colors I missed.  I don't think I'll have many hexagons in aqua for July, it's an unusual color for reproduction fabrics, but I'll hunt out what I have.

Aqua kid prints aren't hard to find!  Some of these are old favorites, and a few of them came as ready-cut charm squares from the big museum sale last month.  I'm going to need a lot of these stretched star blocks per quilt since they're small, only 4.5 in. finished.

Speaking of aqua, check out this vintage quilt I saw at a flea market last Sunday.  Star blocks with a pink background alternate with aqua blocks with pink centers.  I always love looking at antique quilts.  Frequently you see things you've never seen before.

It's been fun having the grand kids around more this summer.  Here's Buddy, just hanging around.  Hang on, Buddy!  He had to hold the pose while waiting for me to take the photo, and I was kind of slow.  He's not angry, just straining to hold on.  Sorry, Buddy.
 

Our black raspberries are ripe, and the little boys love picking and eating them, which is what Little Guy is doing here.  We have also had lots for eating on cereal, etc., and a few pints for the freezer.  Snicky the cat wants to go out whenever we do, so he's learning to walk on a leash.  Or maybe I'm learning to go wherever he wants to go.  But we will not be chasing any birds or rabbits!

And you know where I want to go--the sewing room!  I'm getting some sewing time in this long weekend, but there are errands and other jobs to do, too.  

I hope you have a happy peaceful week ahead, and some time to do the things you love to do.

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap