That dazed look on my face? That’s a sure sign of summer. I’ve been driving kids around, prepping for road trips, and keeping everyone busy. It’s starting to feel as if I’m not having a summer … Summer is having me!
It’s a minor miracle, then, that I have a finish to share. This is the Fire Truck Quilt from a free tutorial by Erica Jackman of Kitchen Table Quilting. I made it for a very special one-year-old. I hope he loves it!
Before you balk at the idea of sewing a pixelated quilt, with all its little pieces and seams, this project was fun and surprisingly fast. In fact, this is the second Fire Truck quilt I’ve made over the years. (See the first one here.)
What makes this quilt worthy of a second go-round? Aside from the fact that it’s crazy cute, it’s a fabulous venue for busting through scraps. I counted 24 different reds in this project, all of which came from my scrap bin or hoard of red fat quarters.
Amassing the required number of red squares wasn’t challenging, but assembling the grays were. My stash contains brownish grays and purpley grays and grays with green undertones. I homed in on the shade of gray that was the most prevalent and ran with it, even breaking open a jelly roll and cutting the strips into 2.5-inch squares to meet the necessary number.
The piecing went faster with this second version. Because the design has so few colors, I was able to mindlessly chain-piece the reds and grays into chunks of four squares. From there, I would lay out a section of the quilt and sew it before moving on to the next.
I pressed my seams to one side for this project. Naive Past Michelle thought she was doing herself a favor by pressing everything open in an effort to produce a flat and easy-to-quilt top. Present Michelle had no time for such foolishness! Pressing to the side allowed me to nest my seams, which made the process go faster and resulted in a top that was just as easy to quilt.
I was glad I didn’t wait until the top was finished before selecting a backing fabric. I found the most perfect print for the back from On the Go by Stacy Iest Hsu and was able to steer the palette—especially the colors in the windshield—to coordinate.
How is the summer going for you? Are you finding the time to sew or out and about, enjoying all that the season has to offer? (Friends in the southern hemisphere, I’d love to hear from you, too!)
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I love your fire truck quilt! You did a great job.
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