Redding's Quilt

I like to browse the clearance craft section at Walmart and occasionally run across some delicious, too good to pass up deals. This is what I found the other day...

 

I couldn't have been more thrilled! Redding is absolutely crazy about Thomas the Tank Engine. He can name all the trains and recognize them and tell the different between them even in black and white coloring pages. It's truly crazy. Anyway, this steal was a pack of 7 fat quarters for $5.00-- 3 of the Red print, 2 Blue, and 2 stripes. Now, I'm not in love with the stripes as it reminds me of the kind of fabric used in Jamaican headdresses, but I'm willing to work with it as Redding will really like the bright colors and I think I can still make it look cool. I've settled on doing a basic block quilt, in 7"x7" blocks of fabric, 6 blocks x 6 blocks large. That should give me a finished size of about 40" x 40" with enough fabric left over to crank out a pillow case too hopefully. The prints are large, so I didn't want to take away from them by cutting the blocks too small (I'm also all for finishing this quilt within the next week or so, instead of, well, never). So here's a simple sketch I drew up after playing around a little bit.

I plan on rotating the stripe pieces to make it a bit more interesting, but the prints aren't directional, so there's no need to worry about those. I was able to get everything cut out tonight and will begin piecing tomorrow. I'm not 100% on the backing just yet, but I'm thinking a cozy flannel in black maybe. I think I have enough of this in my stash, so that's part of the appeal :) But it would also offset the bright colors on the front nicely. I'm probably going to go with a "stitch in the ditch" method for quilting in black thread with some accents of free handing around some of the characters within the blocks just to give it a more quilty look. But we'll see. And black 1" binding around the edges probably. I'll keep you posted :)

~ Erin