Thomas the Train Quilt and Card

It's 5:14 a.m. and I'm wide awake. In fact I had been tossing and turning in bed since 2:00 and about half an hour ago I gave up and got up. We did just over 27 km (about 16 miles) on the bikes today at Rondeau so I should be tired enough to sleep all night. Not sure what woke me up but awake I am. 

So, I thought as long as I'm awake I may as well post on the blog. This is the Thomas the Train quilt I designed and made for my grandson's 3rd birthday and the Thomas the Train card made from the same fabric. He hasn't got it yet because the trip to see him keeps getting delayed because of bad weather and busy families but he'll get it soon.

 

 

I didn't have a pattern for this quilt but that's okay because I seldom follow one anyway. I just made it up as I went along. I just can't get into the drafting out a quilt on paper bit. The only Thomas the Train fabric that was suitable at all was a panel with the two large prints with the border running along the side....likely designed to be made for a pillow. So, I bought two panels and squared them up as much as I could. Printed fabric is not square and it is a bone of contention for us quilters. There was just enough of the border print to go along the top and the bottom so I had to design the quilt to be that width. The rest of the fabric is from the stash.

 

I decided to make a simple twirling star block to go between the large panels. The backing was a small TtheT print. So I fussy cut 12 of those, using 8 to make the stars and four in the corners. Then I decided to put the green fabric in between to make it the same width as the large panels.

 

Here's a close up of the stars.

 

 

I was explaining the quilt to one of my quilting friends and she asked me how I was going to quilt it. I hadn't really thought that far ahead but I said I knew I wanted to free-motion stitch around the trains and if I could find a train pattern I would stitch a train along the border, and I would do something easy for the rest of it. Wouldn't you know she had a train pattern and lent it to me. If you look closely you can see that I ended up stitching stars in the blue fabric surrounding the stars. I thought this would work because of the small stars in the white fabric. The green strips and the red sashing all have wavy lines quilting on them.

Here's a close-up of the train along the border - all done free-motion.

Turned out pretty good EXCEPT (there's always an except in each quilt it seems) see those little bits of white in some of the wheels? That's the Johnny Sew paper that is suppose to iron on and then peel off. So, following the directions on his package, I printed out enough of the train pattern to go all around the quilt and then iron it on and stitched. Worked great until I got to the peel off part. I've picked out most of it but this is what it started out as.

Lots and lots of white paper stuck in there - around the entire quilt! AGGGGHHHH. What a chore to pick it all out without picking out the stitches. Joe even washed it for me once and it didn't take hardly any out. So annoying. The rest will eventually come out as it's worn and washed....I hope! That's the first and last time I'll use that product!

So, there was a bit of fabric left over from the back so I decided to make him a TtheT card as well.

First, birthday paper was glued to a blue card base with some stickers to decorate it top and bottom.
More fussy cut circles from the back of the quilt fabric, fused to paper and the glued to the card. The ones on the left and right are glued down flat, the one in the centre is on dimensional dots. I do believe the train loving little boy will love it. He's only three so a late birthday card won't upset him.

Sorry for the long post but there was a lot to talk about in this quilt.