River Rat TOGA Raffle Quilt

  9.5" unfinished block

Dear River Rat Togateers,
As you know we will not be meeting for a Sew-In this Spring. We still want to have a raffle quilt ready for the River Rat Toga in September even if we have to save it for next year.

We are designing this year's quilt around four 24" blocks that were made by Cindy Peters. We want to add more star blocks around them in order to arrive at a 66" x 72" top.  We put out a call earlier and asked for assorted 3.5", 6.5" and 9.5" unfinished STAR blocks.

I have designed a simple quilt that is built with four quadrants.  We are planning to have you mail your blocks to a central person (me) who will scramble them all up (for color variation) and then send them to four volunteers who will assemble them into their quadrants and then send them on to the next volunteer who will put the four pieces together.   OUR MAIL BY DATE IS MAY 8TH!

9.5" unfinished block.

This is what we need for the star blocks.
Thirty two (32)
6.5" unfinished blocks.
They can be made up of one 6.5" blocks
OR
Four 3.5" blocks.

Sixteen (16)
9.5" unfinished blocks.
They can be made up of one 9.5" block
OR
Nine 3.5" blocks
OR
One 6.5" and five 3.5" unfinished blocks
OR 
Four 4.5" unfinished blocks.
We would appreciate you sending one or more 10" light background pieces (just in case we need to fill in some spots.) when you send your blocks. Or send any of the other sizes if you can.

Cindy's block with muslin shown on the left and white on the right. 
If this doesn't look like a pale creamy yellow the computer color is incorrect.
It is NOT a tan color.

Color and Star Rules                                          
All the backgrounds should be light and scrappy unless you prefer to use a single background color.
The backgrounds can be anything from the white and the muslin shown above to the creamy light yellow that is in Cindy's block,
The star points can be any color you want.  They can be monochromatic or multicolored and scrappy.
The stars can float inside the block or reach to the edge of the quarter inch seam.

6.5" unfinished block with a scrappy background.

Send your blocks to Nancy Drew.  
OUR MAIL BY DATE IS MAY 8TH!
My address and phone numbers will be posted on the River Rat Toga.io site and the Minn/Wisc Junkies.io site.
You may also leave a message for me in the comments and I will answer them.

These blocks are not patterns you must follow.  They just happen to be the ones I made. They really are square, it is just the camera angle. - N.

A tap on the pictures will enlarge them.

6.5" unfinished block.

Remember, OUR MAIL BY DATE IS MAY 8TH!
Hugs, Nancy

The River Rat TOGA in Lake City MN - 2011

Hi Mary and Jeni,   Here are some beautiful sewing machines from the TOGA.  I am sure you are interested!

A beautiful Eldridge.

A 185 with a new walnut base from Cindy and a new handcrank.

The 2-1/2" strip exchange

Treadle Annie's applique quilt of a Jones handcrank.

Jones CS Handcrank with yellow rose decals.

John with his aluminium 101 open and showing oil wick system.

A beautiful German Handcrank, maker to be determined later.

My Singer 128, cleaned, oiled and making a good stitch now.

Lots of 'meching' going on here.

Early Saturday morning before the crowd. (Cindy in the Kitchen)

My what a pretty sewing machine you have my dear.

Words fail me.  It was a lot of fun and many many things were learned.   Toga's are too much fun to be legal.

Love,

Nancy

Getting Ready for the Toga block exchange

Hi guys,  

I have been working on some blocks for the TOGA block exchange.  Since it is the 10th Anniversary of the River Rat Toga there are a lot of people coming.  I had to make more than 20 blocks.  I finished 26 and this shows 21 of them.

21 of the 26 leaves I made.

The following are close up photos of leaves made from the fabric I bought at the Linden Tree.

I added orange and a yellow/orange/green batik to this leaf.

I had a lot of fun finding 'fall' fabrics for my leaves.   Batiks seem to be the best although there is one fabric that is plain quilters cotton.  One of the places I found fabric was right around the corner from Mom and Dad's place.  It is called the Linden Tree.   Jeni and I went there first last spring.  E hangs out there whenever she comes over.  It has some really fine batiks.  I love this pinky orange floral.  I bought it and the unbleached muslin I used for the backing there.  Oh and I also bought a few other fabrics.   Heh.   They seem to match my taste in fabric quite well.

I put more of the yellow/green/orange in this leaf.

Oh, and for those of you who have never been to a TOGA, it is a Treadle On Gathering and Academy for those of us who collect, and use, vintage sewing machines.   My latest baby is a #30 Pfaff that I found just a few blocks up from the Linden Tree at an estate sale.   The cutest cabinet and the top is a bookshelf!  Never seen one like that before.   Walnut that needs a little restoration but very nice.   Here is a pic.

My 'new' Pfaff #30 by it's cabinet.  The bottom drawer was being glued
when I took this pic.  The top right is a bookshelf instead of a drawer!

Mostly the pinky orange floral in this one.

So, can you find those three leaves in the top photo?

Love you,
Nancy

TOGA madness

Well Mary I finally got my computer working! So I can put up the videos I took at the River Rat TOGA in Lake City MN a couple of weeks ago. 

I hope, hope, hope this is the video of Annie doing free hand feathers on a treadle machine. Wow is she good at it.
This is the third time I tried to get the 3 minute video up. I think I finally made it. I would watch these with the sound off. There is a lot of gossip going on in the background and it is distracting from the work. Although not for Annie! She just keeps on treadling.

YES!!
Love,
Nancy

TOGA TOGA TOGA

Hi there Mary,

That is the way you start your message calling all Treadle 'onions' from the land of Treadle On to a gathering.

TreadleOnGAthering is how I assume the name TOGA got started, but like many things in Treadleonia it is a mystery to me.

One thing that often happens, according to Cindy Peters of Lake City, MN is a TOGA entertainment which involves ambulances or some sort of official intervention. This time is was a car starting on fire right in front of Cindy's storefront and then (thank goodness) it continued through the intersection until a valiant citizen of Lake City ran into the street and, waving her arms, stopped the car and dragged the confused and protesting driver to safety. Cindy is going to find out who our heroine was. She claims everyone in Lake City will know by tomorrow morning.At that point cars continued to drive around the stopped car so several of us (yes, me too, you know how bossy I am) went out into the street to stop traffic. Several people were quite indignant that they couldn't drive past the burning car and had to go AROUND THE BLOCK!

Once the 2 police cars, and then the fire department got there they effectively blocked the street and we could go back to gawking. I got a few photo's and thought you would all like to see the fire department in action. They had a little trouble getting the hood off and when they finally did we all cheered.

This happened on Sunday morning so after this excitement we went up to the church and watched Damascus Annie (Annie Kusilek) do some free motion quilting on her Singer Treadle. I think it is a 15/90 Singer but I am not sure. Hopefully someone will confirm or correct me.

I was fascinated by her 'feathers'. All I can say is WOW WOW WOW.

After that I got out my new Singer 99 to check it over and do a little practice sewing on it. It was pulling the fabric a little and I was wondering about the pressure on the presser foot, so I called Bill Holman over and he looked at the machine. He noticed the tension knob was incorrectly assembled so he took it off and fixed it and put it back. What a guy. He is what a Treadlonian calls a OSMG (Old Sewing Machine Guy) They are national treasures in the sewing machine world and I can certainly agree about Bill. I am sure he had forgotten more stuff about sewing machines than all the rest of us put together knew.

I tried to post a video of Annie treadling the feather quilting but the download died. I will show you when I get home on Monday.

Love,

Nancy