Finished Transportation Quilt

 I have been working on the transportation quilt I am making for our grandson for some time. He was turning two and I wanted to finish it in time for his birthday.  Not that he would know or care, but I wanted to get it done by then.

      

I found some absolutely adorable fabric online with cartoon workers and construction vehicles. What did we do before the internet???

As with all the appliqués I have done, I stitched around the designs as part of the quilting process.  I did most of the quilting in free motion.  Then I added a binding using the same fabric I used for the backing. 

I was unhappy with the bus and plane square.  I remade them and then saved the originals. This is explained in earlier posts.

I quilted each one with batting and scrap fabric for the backing. I sewed them together with right sides facing, leaving part of one side open. 

 I turned them right side out and then stuffed the pillow with poly fill stuffing and stitched it closed. I had a matching pillow!

       

I managed to finish before his birthday.  He is now using his new quilt.  I don't know if he appreciates it or not, but I guess time will tell.

      

Top Of The Transportation Quilt

 I used a pattern for first six construction vehicles on the transportation quilt I'm making for my grandson. I cut out shapes on my Cricut to use as a template for the next three vehicles.  I found designs for a train, a school bus and a fire truck.  I played around with them a bit to make them a bit more simple so they would fit in with the first six.

I wanted to add three more shapes.  I didn't find three that I liked in the Cricut catalog, so I looked at online free images.  I picked out the ones I wanted.  I tried to trace them from my iPad. My iPad screen is not big enough. I enlarged the design so that the whole thing didn't fit on the screen. I taped tracing paper on my counter and tried very hard not to touch the screen with anything but my pencil, because caused the whole thing to move. Then I shifted the design on the screen to get the whole thing traced. I managed to get the designs I wanted in the size I wanted after a LOT of crumbled up tracing paper.

I used the tracings to make a page of shapes to trace on Steam A Seam.  I ironed it on the back side of the fabric, then appliquéd them on the precut white squares.

I made a garbage truck using two different designs for inspiration.  Getting the recycling design drawn and appliquéd was a bit tricky, but fun.

The helicopter I traced and appliquéd as I found it.  It fit in really well with the flavor of the original designs, kind of cartoonish.

 

Airplanes are a favorite of Wesley's. He stops what he is doing and runs to the window to try and find one when he hears one flying by.  

This is the shape I chose.

When I cut out the final shape, it was too big to go horizontal, so I angled it down, like a strafing run.  I didn't really want to have it horizontal as it would fill more of the square rising or falling. I sent a text of the picture to my daughters.  Trista asked why the plane was crashing.

Oh. That was not the impression I wanted to convey.  So I used the same design and aimed it up as though it was climbing. After all, the plane has windows, so it must be a passenger plane.  They don't do strafing runs!

I saved the diving plane and I may use it as a pillow to go with the quilt.

The top is finished and I'm waiting for the fabric for the back to be delivered.

Adding To The Transportation Quilt

 After I made all the designs for a construction quilt, I thought that the six shapes were insufficient.  I found this pattern on Etsy,

so I looked there for more shapes. 

I changed the sizes and did some minor tweaks to suit me

There were other patterns on Etsy that I liked, but they included things like covered wagons and bicycles. I didn't want to do that.  

It was important to match the simplistic style of the previous patterns. The biggest obstacle to adding designs is my absolute inability to draw any recognizable shape.  My stick figures are pretty sad, too. 

I wanted to add a school bus, train and fire engine.  These are all things that Wesley finds fascinating. 

I found some simple designs on my Cricut Design Space. I also Googled some cartoon images. These are the ones I used to make a ladder truck/fire engine.

I cut out the shapes from Cricut and then played with the shapes until I was happy with the finished shapes.

Once again I traced the designs on a sheet of Steam A Seam.  I roughly cut out the shapes and ironed them onto the back side of the chosen fabric.  Then I cut out the shapes and assembled them to finish the design.  

Along the way I made small artistic changes. And when I say artistic, I do not in any way claim to be an artist.  I don't even identify as an artist.  But I do seem to be able to play around with someone else's design to suit my ideas. But you can decide how successful I am.

The train is a bit smaller than the other designs and less cartoon like.But I wanted to get the second car included.  After all, is an engine alone a train??  It may not match the feeling of the other designs, but I'm happy with it.

Now, my problem is that I think I may want to add some more designs. After all, our grandson, Wesley, really likes garbage trucks.  He also loves airplanes and helicopters.  I'm not sure when this madness will end. 

Transportation Quilt

Our 18 month old grandson loves trucks and other large construction equipment.  Is it because he is a boy, or are we unconsciously leading him in that direction?  Who knows?  But he loves all large vehicles

I looked online to find a pattern to make him a quilt. I found a few good ones on Etsy. I started making projects using Steam A Seam to appliqué shapes on fabric as part of the design. I used it extensively for the horse quilt I wrote about previously. This pattern uses a lot of appliqué. 

The one I bought had six different designs. But they were two different sizes. Three of each size. I didn't want to do that. I discovered that if I used my copier and reduced the larger designs (the three on the left) to 75%, they would be similar sizes.

I made some minor changes. Then I traced the patterns on the Steam a Seam, cut out roughly around the tracing and then ironed onto the back of the chosen fabric.  Using the pictures, I assembled the vehicle and ironed them in place. 

After I made the six designs, I laid them out to see how the quilt would look.  Now I think I need to make it a bit bigger. 

I need to decide which three vehicles to add.  My current plan is a train, a fire engine and a yellow school bus, because the wheels go round and round.