Cars, Trains, and the Great Outdoors

While I've been posting other things I've been working on a masculine quilt top to send to Margaret's Hope Chest. I am determined to send one for a boy!

The first thing I did was to go through my novelty prints, looking for those that might appeal to the masculine mind. They are definitely in the minority in my stash. These seemed to hold the most promise:

We have a camping print, some trains, and vintage cars. They don't exactly go together but I thought I could make them work.

The first thing I did was to cut the prints at logical places, not necessarily to a specific size. The camping print basically just got its' ragged edges trimmed off so it's still quite wide (or tall, depending on how you look at it). The other two ended up being pretty much cut in half.

So far, so good. This is when the real challenge began. I had to figure out how much fabric I needed to add to achieve the 60 inch length I wanted for the finished quilt. And then I had to find the right colors/prints to use.

Plaids seemed like a good place to start. And what boy doesn't like red? It only took a little fiddling to find the right combination of colors and sizes for the strips to go on either side of the camping print.

But making that vintage car print work with the trains and the camping print was another story!

I found a darker red I thought I would use between the cars and the trains but in the end it worked better as the final border. Then I found a red print with a light blue in it ~ it magically appeared to have just the right colors in it to tie the two focal prints together. During the process of looking for the right fabric I auditioned a small gray wobbly windowpane check. That was too bland for a wide strip but it worked wonderfully as a transition strip between the focal fabrics and the reds. If you click on this picture (below) you should get a really large version so you can see the details.

Yesterday I finally acquired the batting I need for the two children's quilts. So now it's on to basting (yuck) and quilting. I'm not really sure how I'm going to quilt either of them at this point. I don't have a lot of time to fret about it however. The finished quilts need to be in MI very early in December. That only gives me three weeks or so. It shouldn't take that long to do two small quilts but I am the Mistress of Avoidance. ;- )