Transportation Quilt

This past weekend was spent with my quilting friends at a quilt retreat in Central Alberta. I have a few projects well-started from having uninterrupted time to sew and hope to show you a few over the next couple of posts. My #1 grandson moved this summer to a big boy bed to make room for his little brother and I promised a quilt for that bed. I've collected a number of transportation themed fabrics and wanted to put them together with something that could be used as a road for him to drive his cars on. This is what I ended up with:

I puzzled over how to do the yellow dotted lines for quite a while and it's been the road-block that's prevented this quilt from getting completed. This is how I finally did it:

Cut 2 1/2" strip of yellow, full width of fabric
Cut 4 1/2" strip of gray, full width of fabric
Sew these strips together. If you have a large quilt, you can put 4 strips together as shown here:

Press well and then cut crosswise 3/4" (yes, that small!) Join these small pieces together end to end like this:

For the driving lanes, cut two 3" strips of gray, full width of fabric. Sew a gray driving lane, yellow line, gray driving lane together like this:

Cut your feature fabrics to the size you want (I used fat quarters and cut 4 squares 9"x9" from each.)
Lay out in a pleasing pattern and use your "highway" strips the same as you would any regular sashing. I assembled mine in rows and then sewed the rows together with a long strip of "highway" between. This is really an easy quilt to make, the blocks are one piece and the "highway" is really just basic sashing that's been re-invented as an imaginary highway for a little boy!

Happy Quilting!
--Ann