Butterflies, More Kaffe, and Black Cats

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Does this butterfly quilt look familiar?  I finished the top a while back, made from a UFO started by an unknown quilter.  The project was passed on to our quilt group with the request that we finish and donate it to a charity of our choice.  (Click HERE for more details on the quilt.)

I made the top, but I knew my primitive quilting skills would not enhance it.  These butterflies deserved to fly!  Luckily, we have several very talented long arm quilters in our group.  Our own Nancy Queen of Scraps came to the rescue and did the lovely quilting.

I had it back to bind it, and got that done this week.  I hope the person who gets it can enjoy it for many years to come.

Here's yet another Kaffe Fassett quilt made from my scraps!  I adore these fabrics.  Recently I was cutting up scraps I was given, and discovered a bunch of small rectangles of Kaffe fabric.  I trimmed them to 2.5 in. x 3.5 in., and added in more from the stash.

The light green with the light blue dots is one of the fabrics from the scrap bag.  Most of the rest are from my stash.  The light print is definitely NOT a Kaffe print, just a fun one.

The pattern I used came from this book, Jelly Roll Quilts, by Pam and Nicky Lintott, copyright 2008.  They called it Sparkling Gemstones.  I changed the sewing a bit (they used strip piecing and I rarely do any more).  I have made this pattern several times, but never before with Kaffe fabric!

The border is a leftover Kaffe print from my own butterfly quilt, which is not yet finished (I'm looking for the perfect backing lol).  

Coincidentally, the backing for this Kaffe quilt is a purple print with butterflies.  I bound it with a solid purple.

So what about those black cats?

I didn't realize I had so many different black prints until I pulled them out for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  September's color is "dark", so this fits.

I freely admit I got carried away with these cat blocks.  It was fun using cat prints and matching up the black prints with the backgrounds (book print with READ fabric, Star Wars with a Star Wars background, pink and black cat fabric with Hello Kitty, etc.).

This block with the white paw prints on black is my favorite, mostly because of the kitten in the background fabric.  It looks just like my little Snicklefritz did when we brought him home from the shelter.

These black cats are going into their very own quilt.

I did get cucumbers at the Farmers Market last week, and made up 8 pints of Bread and Butter Pickles.  I feel good having these all done for the year, but it really did make the house smell like apple cider vinegar.

After we left the Farmers Market, we went to the Labyrinth Garden in Regner Park.  (Click HERE for more information and directions.)  Admission is free and it is open to the public throughout the growing season.  The labyrinth is maintained by volunteers, whose work is excellent.

I had never been to a labyrinth before, and was unsure what to expect.  It was so peaceful and quiet, walking the grassy paths.  And there were so many beautiful flowers.  I'm so glad we went, it was a very worthwhile experience.  

Our little boys got their school pictures taken last week!  These are just the proofs we will be ordering from.

Buddy is in 3rd grade!  He's looking so grown up.

Our Little Guy is starting to look like a big kid!  What is happening?  I don't feel any older!

These two are coming over later and spending the night while their parents have an evening out.  So I need to make up beds and bake some cookies.

Have a wonderful week!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

 Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

  

Jumping Jacks And The Last Saturday of Orange

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Thanks for stopping by!

The grandkids are back in school, this time both of the little ones go all day.  You'd think this would mean more time for quilting, right?  And it would, if I wasn't so far behind on jobs I need to do around here.  I did get this little Jumping Jacks quilt finished Friday morning.

The pattern came from this book, Quilts in Wales by Kaffe Fassett.  I enjoy his quilt books, and usually get them from the library, as they're kind of expensive.  The fabrics are wonderful, the photography is lush, so they're great to dream over even if you never make anything from them.  This one had several patterns I wanted to try.  After returning it to the library, I just had to have my own copy.

As you can see, this is a simple quilt to make.  The block is often called Hour Glass, and is made of 4 triangles.  Mine is smaller than Kaffe's, and I used the Companion Angle ruler to cut the triangles.  

For the triangles, I used only Kaffe Fassett fabrics and solids.  The music note fabric was just for fun, and the border is a non-Kaffe print.  Many years ago, my friend Debbie C. (hi, Debbie!) introduced me to Kaffe Fassett fabrics at a quilt show.  She makes amazing art quilts, and these prints bursting with color have lots of impact.  At the time, I was mostly making reproduction quilts.  I loved browsing in booths that displayed the fabrics, but I wasn't sure how I would use them.  That has changed!

Here's the back, a colorful bug print given to me by a friend.  It was recycled from a tablecloth!  The binding is a solid aqua.  I'll be donating this quilt locally.

Of course there are orange blocks in the quilt!  I really love orange.

Orange month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is always one of my favorites.  I had lots of fun piecing these bits and crumbs onto my grocery receipts.  I'm starting to think of some ideas of how to use these strips in quilts.  About time!  The end of the year is coming fast.

We recently renovated our tired 1970s bathrooms in neutral colors, mostly gray and white.  That meant I could accent with any color, and I wanted something bright for the en suite.  Of course I chose orange!  The shower curtain was the brightest one I could find around here, and I was surprised and delighted to find orange towels.  I bought the rug at Goodwill when my friend Joey and I went to Sun Prairie a couple of weeks ago.  

I love this color scheme for now, and I love how I can easily change it later if I tire of it.  Maybe next time I'll choose purple!

Happy Birthday again to our lovely granddaughter, now officially a teenager!  Shown here with her wonderful parents.

The sweet corn is ripe and delicious!  We may have a couple more weeks of it.  These ears went into the freezer after we ate a few for dinner.  I'm off to the Farmer's Market this morning to get a few more, and maybe some cucumbers for Bread and Butter pickles.

Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful week!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy, home of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Strings and Rails and a UFO

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

This week I finished a new "antique" quilt.  I'm showing it here with some other antiques.  The pitcher and bowl belonged to my grandmother's adoptive mother, and it's sitting on a Minnesota A sewing machine from the 1890s.

Here's what I had when I started this quilt.  I don't know why I'm drawn to other people's UFOs, when I have plenty of them myself.  I saw this project at a sale, and really tried hard to leave it there.  It was a bag stuffed with these strips of little 4 patches (2 in. finished) and plain squares.  Only $10!  Of course I caved and bought it.

The project had to wait while I finished a few other things, but eventually I laid all the strips out on the table to decide on placement.  The original quilter had planned an on-point layout, but it looked like she had trouble figuring it out.  I had to do a little unsewing/resewing to get it right.

The fabrics in the top are 1930s reproductions.  I wanted the quilt to feel like an antique, so I added a border from my vintage stash.  The orange binding goes with the orange roses in the print.  And I would have used it even if it wasn't orange month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!

The quilting is a simple grid on the pieced area and a swag in the border. 

There are so many cute fabrics in these tiny squares!

The back is a 1930s repro from my stash.  More orange roses!

I'll be keeping this one.  It will go on my quilt ladder in the dining room.  I change them out seasonally.  This one looks like spring to me.

In other news, orange blocks for my RSC quilts.

String blocks are so much fun!  I make a giant mess sorting through the strings, but it's worth it.

I didn't realize before joining the Rainbow Scrap Challenge how many different shades of every color there are, like the oranges in these rail fence blocks.  I love including all the shades together.

We're getting close to the end of the year!  I can hardly wait to start putting the RSC blocks into quilts.

I spent last Saturday with a friend (hi, Joey!) and it was so much fun.  We had a lovely lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant, and then we went to a going-out-of-business sale at a quilt store.  It's always sad when a quilt shop closes, but we were happy to help them sell off their inventory at half price.  This was the loot I brought home.  Do you see the orange?  It's a Cat in the Hat Halloween print!

So I guess I broke my "only buying second hand fabric this year" rule.  Oh well, I can live with that for $6 a yard quilt shop novelty prints!  

The best thing about Saturday wasn't fabric, it was having time to talk and laugh and enjoy each other's company.

My little grandsons start school on Monday, so I guess the summer is almost officially over.  Last Wednesday we went to my older daughter's house to visit, and had a picnic at the Lake Michigan shore.  These goofy guys had fun climbing on the rocks and looking for fossils.

Wednesday was my granddaughter's 13th birthday!  I can hardly believe how grown up she is.  That's her standing next to me.  I'm keeping a "death grip" on Buddy who has been running around like a nut.  Both of the little boys are making silly faces.  We do have a lot of fun.

I hope you're having a lot of fun, too.  Good luck with your projects, and have a great week!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

  

Tumblers, Stars, and Flying Geese

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Isn't it amazing what we find when we clean out the stash?  When going through the basement stuff I found a bag of these little tumbler pieces.  I cut them MANY years ago with an Accuquilt die.  It was so much fun cutting up the scraps I went a little overboard.  I made a small quilt with them back then, but had dozens left over.  The quilt measures 38 in. x 46 in., and will be donated locally.

Seeing these scraps again was a trip down memory lane.  But, a lot of them were from the same prints, and even 2 or 3 colors in that same print.  I like my scrap quilts to be really scrappy, so I cut even more tumblers from my current bright scraps, and cut the light fabric to go in between.

The backing is a heart print, bought second hand at the museum sale last June.  I got the red polka dot for the binding there, too.  That's a theme with my quilting this year, using second hand fabrics for donation quilts.  Only good quality cottons need apply!

The border is a popsicle print, completely appropriate for summer.  We often have a "popsicle party" on the back porch with our youngest grandsons on a hot day.  

Check out the selvedge on the popsicle fabric:  1994!  I knew I had it a long time, but 30 years??  Stored properly, good fabrics can last many years.

Speaking of second hand fabric, I bought all this loot at a flea market last weekend.  Most of it will be used for quilts etc. for grownups, not my usual kid quilts, except for the Raggedy Ann and Andy panels.  The print that's mostly blue in the back is vintage, but the rest are fairly recent.  

I snapped a photo of this antique quilt at the flea market.  Not a great picture, sorry, it's hard to get more than a quick snap with the crowds.  I've always liked this pattern, sometimes called Hummingbird or Periwinkle.  What attracts me most, of course, is all the variety in the scraps.

More orange scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!  This time of year is exciting.  We're finishing up the last few colors and looking ahead to the quilts we're going to make with all these blocks.  I can hardly wait!  The blocks above are Stretched Stars, just 5 in. cut squares with 2.5 in. white squares sewn on two opposite corners.

The 3-D Flying Geese are coming in for a landing!  Only a couple more colors to go.

I'm looking forward to seeing everybody else's rainbow quilts soon.

Our grandsons aka Buddy and Little Guy posed for me in front of our wonderful library yesterday.  They are well stocked for reading material now.  Only one more week of summer vacation until school starts!

Lastly, another photo from our vacation in Vienna.  That's my hubby, pouring out his troubles to Dr. Sigmund Freud, who seems very unaffected, probably because it's a wax museum and he's made of wax.

Have a lovely week, with lots of things you like to do.  Like quilting!

Cheers,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

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