These were Christmas presents for two little boys. The 2 year old likes cars, trucks- really anything with wheels. The 1 year old, well he doesn't have a lot of preferences yet, but he sure does love the family's assorted dogs. These were the first quilts I'd finished in years, and even at just 36x46" the largest. I took my cues from Elizabeth Bett's Car Quilt from Beginner's Guide to Quilting.
The tops are pieced in cotton. I did go out and buy fabric special for these as I don't keep a lot of kid oriented fabric on hand. They were both supposed to be all 5 inch squares, but the construction equipment print ended up being too big for that. A very nice lady at my Local Quilt Shop suggested making large squares of it instead. Brilliant! The backs on both are flannel. Rather than the usual binding, I just brought the back around. I used a low loft all cotton batting. For the quilting, I did it by hand with with a perl thread. Thank goodness I have a standing quilting hoop because it saved me a lot of backache.
Overall, I'm very pleased. The dog one especially came out exactly like I pictured. I washed them with color catchers before wrapping them up and got a tiny bit of bleeding even still on the cars one. I hear from their mom that they're getting a lot of use out of them!
