Day 15

Today was a beautiful day! The quilt pieces that I had been looking for in the mail arrived this afternoon, so I was able to get a little bit more of the quilt put together before heading out of town to enjoy Super Bowl weekend!! :-)

I went to The Quilt Shoppe - now one of my favorite places to "shop" - and one of the nice ladies working at the store helped me pick out 2 shades of blue for the background and the border. I also picked up some more red to make thin strips that will go around both sides of the border of the quilt.

I did not want to use plain colors for the blues as I wanted something that stood out. However, I also did not want a pattern that would detract from the cars. What I ended up doing was using a tie-dye pattern for both blues - the background will be a bright blue/black combo, and the border will be a blue/white combo. I think the darker one will look great with the black GT on the crib side of the quilt, and the lighter one will allow the border GTs to stand out without competing with them or the other blue. The patterns are both tie-dye, so they look like they go together, rather than just selecting random patterns. I'm hoping my vision looks as good on the quilt as it does in my head. :-)

Once the package arrived from Lisa (thank you sis!!), I took off the paper backing on each of the fabric sheets, and examined the color.

The black GT pieces look MUCH better than the original ones, and the paper backing came off incredibly smoothly.

The 6 sheets were then prewashed with a color bleed fabric sheet, the knots and fraying were cut off, they were put in the drier, and then they were ironed. The heritage GT sheet and the tungsten GT sheets both had color spots fade off.

However, they are the border cars and it should not be very noticeable overall.

I did have a bit of a blonde moment... :-( I realized that I had only printed enough border cars for one side. Therefore, I called the quilt shop as it was 4:30 to see if they had any of the "Printed Treasures" fabric sheets. They had 2 packs, which was exactly what I needed. They said they would wait for me, and luckily I got there right at 5 PM, so they didn't have to wait long.

Then I took those sheets to the local printer - the guy who did the decals for the GT model (the last project I did). They normally close at 5 PM, but they were open until 6 PM today, since they were so busy (lucky for me!). They not only printed another set of border cars for me on the new Printed Treasures fabric sheets, but they didn't charge me anything!!!!! They simply asked if I'd bring the quilt in when it was done so they could see it, as did the quilt store. No problem!! :-)

When I returned home, I put the new blue fabric that I bought in the washing machine w/a color bleed sheet, and peeled the paper off of the back of the border car fabric sheets that I just had done. I then washed the red fabric, dried all of the new fabric, and ironed them.

I sort of had a little production line going on for different parts of the quilt all around the house. :-) While waiting for the fabric to wash and dry, I laid out all of the pieces that would be the black GT, and put these pieces together on the rotary mat. I cut 1/4" seam allowances around each of the 3 remaining pieces that arrived today.

The white that you see in the picture around each piece will (hopefully) not be seen once the pieces are sewn together.

I will have to cut out a 1/4" seam allowance around the border of the entire black GT photo, so I started at the bottom right corner and drew a 1/4" border around the edge.

Then I cut them out.

I only had time to do this with 2 pieces, but I should be able to finish with the rest of the pieces in the morning.

Then I took the prewashed yellow, tungsten, and heritage border GTs and cut them out.

Just as I had done with the red, white, and blue border cars, I traced the outline on the paper side of the fusible webbing.

Then I cut out the webbing for each of the new border cars.

Next, I ironed the webbing onto the back of each piece.

And finally, I cut out the extra material around each car.

Now I have all of one side of the border cars ready to be appliqued.