" Trains"

Once I got the Cursed Quilt Group going, I actually made a quilt top for s. first. It will make an appearance here in the next few entries probably, but not yet.

After the top was completed i. started lobbying for his own quilt, not understanding exactly what that means I suspect. So with the boy in mind, I headed off to the fabric market to fined "IT." I was greatly entertained to find a great train fabric for my central theme. The fabric spread also includes a checkerboard pattern, some double-decker buses, bright red and some lively yellow. After the fact I added a textured gray and some blue. I wanted to add some green but I didn't have any and was too anxious to get started.....of course.

So here it is.  I had originally planned for there to be a strip of the yellow right down the center....then I thought of the red diamonds....and then in the shower one morning I realized that I could make and I for i.....and if you turn it on its side it is an H for good measure. :)  How could I not do it after that.....well, it was almost ill-fated.  You can not see it from the pictures but one end of the I is made up of MANY pieces.  This is because I used every last inch of that yellow piece I bought; literally, I trimmed off the selvedge edge and everything else is as you see it.  (I even unpicked some yellow from the ends where I squared things up!)  That also explains why there isn't any yellow in the back, eh?

When the quilt is put together I  plan to have bias tape "rails" that run over the railroad ties border.  They are apparently not required for i. though as he chugged around the edge every time he found it laying out on the floor for contemplation.  The math involved in this design from my head was staggering.  Calculating proportions so that the border would fit evenly on the center panel....and then having to recalculate it again when I decided to put the strip down the center....and then a third time when it became an I.  Calculating the size of the triangles was actually made easier by a formula I found on http://www.quiltbug.com in their "learn" section.  They have excellent resources on the site for resolving a good many quilting complications.

The fan shaped corners are curved thanks to my Mom who cuts right to the heart of things.  I was complaining that I wasn't sure how you go about attaching the corner piece to a Pieced Grandmother's Fan (I think they are usually applique'd in place.)  She just laughed and asked why I didn't just leave them rounded.  Brilliant...and a LOT less work.  It was still not  easy though....I even have some secrets about those corners that I am not going to confess to.

 

The idea for the back, since I decided I needed to commit to machine quilting something more than just little sample squares, was to crazy quilt with the train pieces that were left.  (It is hard enough to hand quilt through one layer of "pieced" much less two! - in case you didn't follow my logic there. hah.)  I added the panels of "things that go" which turned out to be a somewhat mixed decision.  I like the way they look but the fabric is not the same quality as the others and stretched almost as much cross-grain as the others did on the bias....which I now have a LOT of experience with.  Argh!  When I smooth the back out on the floor it lumps and bumps its way along.  I tried to get a pic of this effect but it didn't show.  I think it took me longer to piece the back than it did to piece the front, although the sheer amount of math I had to do on the front may balance that a bit.

All in all, I really like it so far.  I am not sure how the quilting will go, or how it will look when I am finished with it (since there isn't any "stitch in the ditch" when both sides are pieced) but it ill be exciting.  This is also my first labeled quilt.  The some of the embroidery is hard to see in the pics, but it says "Trains" "2010" and both our names.  (My great grand kids won't have to look on the internet when they have school projects, darn it!  Sorry Great Grandma Isabel....) k.