Day 3

Today is not only the last day of the year, but an exciting one at that!! I cleaned up the cars around the border, giving them more detail since the quilt will be big enough to show the detail. Actually, that's not entirely true... I redid all of the cars, starting over and doing the spokes on the wheels and the black part - this would be the same on all the cars. Then I colored each car again with more detail as shown in these pictures, and I exchanged them with the old pictures. You may think it is a waste of time to spend hours redoing the drawing and painting, but I don't want to do this 1/2 way. As the saying goes... "Go big, or go home." :-)

I also added a roundel decal with the number "6" on the Heritage GT (blue/orange). It looked too plain without this decal, and now it matches the Heritage GT that will be on the white squares.

The good news is that I am FINALLY finished with the drawing and design!!! :-)

There is a lot more that needs to be done though. I had to figure out how to get the picture and graphics on the quilt. Well, after spending another few hours online and making a zillion or so phone calls, I found out that I had a couple of options.

I could use silk screening (like you do with t-shirts). However, this would mean feeling the paint on the quilt (which might also peel off), and I wanted it to stay soft. The next option was to take them to a fabric dyer and have them dye it into the fabric. This is like creating custom fabric. The problem is that I am only making one quilt, and this option is only financially doable if you are using a large quantity of fabric. There are also a few places that will put the images on the fabric for you, but you are looking at spending a few hundred dollars that way. The problem with this third option (outside of the cost) is that the pictures come out as squares. The cars are not shaped like squares, and at that price, I would at least want them to cut the fabric (which of course I would end up having to do)...

The fourth option was to use fabric paper. It is actual paper-sized (8 1/2 x 11) sheets of fabric made of different material. They are not cheap, so I have to make sure I have them exactly the right size before applying the image to the fabric. You put them in an inkjet printer, and then after printing, let them dry for a few hours.

Before ordering the fabric paper, I needed to make sure that the fabric sheets with the images were washable. (I am hoping the baby uses the quilt and that it will be washed frequently.) I also needed high quality cotton, since that is what fabric the rest of the quilt will be. (If you are wondering why, I spent a lot of time online looking at different fabrics to use. Flannel with satin edges would be my top pick since it would feel amazing to a baby! However, obtaining the fabric in these materials would not be easy and would be much more expensive than cotton.)

Printed Treasures is the best fabric paper you can get, and it only costs a few extra dollars than the other brands. Now here is the difficult part... Because they are only 8 1/2 x 11, the black GT on the crib side of the quilt would need to be put onto multiple fabric sheets. I do not want to just do "quarters", because sewing them that way will look very bad. Instead, I am going to have to break the car into pieces (e.g., door, hood/trunk). These pieces will later be cut and appliqued to the quilt. (Yes, "applique" is a new word to me as well, but most of this quilt - all of the cars around the border and the cars in the white squares - will need to be appliqued.) I will get into all of that once the pictures and graphics have been printed.

The other thing I should note is that I have no inkjet printer. I gave my little sister a call, and since she has a printer at her home, I will have these sheets shipped directly to her. I asked her simply to wait at least a day before shipping them back to me so the ink could dry completely.

While I was online looking for ways to attach the graphics and photo to the quilt, I found a place in West Palm Beach called "My Quilt Shoppe". It is about a 30 minute drive, but sounded like "the" place to purchase supplies, so... I decided to swing by and pick up some fabric! On the way, I took a zip drive with the front and back of the quilt on it to The UPS Store to print a copy of each in color. (I figured that seeing the quilt would help with picking out the colors.) This turned out to be more of a hassle than it was worth! After a 10 minute drive, the store did not have a colored printer. (Why advertise that you make copies if you do not offer them in color?) Well, I asked them where I could have colored copies made, and I had to go to the next UPS Store a few miles away. For some reason printing 2 colored sheets of paper took that store 20 minutes, not to mention another 15 minutes of waiting in line! Don't people know that Christmas is over? :-)

Noting the time, I drove rather quickly to get to My Quilt Shoppe before they closed. While there, I used the colored copies to try and find good colors to use, but there were so many to choose from! I was completely lost. (This is even harder than clothes shopping!!) Despite that, the lady at the store was very helpful! We talked about the quilt project and looked through a number of different colors. She also threw in a few tips along the way. Even though they closed at 5 PM, we did not finish until 5:20, and she did not kick me out (as many larger stores do). Since this is not the first time I have noticed this, I thought I'd take a moment to point out that the personal 1-on-1 service you get at small "Ma and Pa" stores is amazing! I was very pleased! :-)

Getting back to shopping... Without seeing the actual images, it was difficult to know how strong the color would come out. In the end, I decided to leave the rest of the fabric behind until I finished the white squares. That way, I could bring the squares in and match them with the fabric once I finished with the applique (this was actually the lady's idea). I picked up a couple yards of white cotton fabric, a rotary mat (which was a supply listed on many of the quilting web-sites I visited), and a large rectangular see-through plastic ruler.

Once I arrived I home, I looked at the rotary mat and felt like an idiot. What a waste of $45! They are closed until 01/04/10, but I will try to return it then...