Throwback Thursday--J's City Quilt

For 18 years, I've been having fun making baby quilts for my great-nephews and great-nieces. Today, I'm sharing one I made for J, who was born in March 2012. 

My plan was to make something car related that could be used as a play mat. My first thought was to buy yardage with a roadway printed on it--you know the kind I mean. But the fabrics I found weren't big enough to suit me and I didn't want to piece a repeating pattern. So I made my own design instead. 

I used graph paper and planned how wide the roads should be so that common toy cars would fit on them and then planned city blocks to fit between them. A quilt like this could be pieced any number of ways, but I chose to use a freezer paper technique. I made a master pattern and traced it in reverse on the freezer paper. Then I searched for a car print fabric to use for the backing and used that fabric for the color scheme of the buildings. Alexander Henry "Beep Beep" was just the right fit for my project. 

I cut the freezer paper apart and ironed the pieces on the wrong side of the fabrics I chose, added 1/4 inch seam allowance, and then pieced the quilt puzzle style. That was probably more work than the design needed, but I had just finished a different quilt using that technique, so I stuck with it. The good thing is that because of the way I planned it, I still have the master pattern if I ever want to make another similar quilt.

Here's the finished quilt:

The quilt was about 40 1/2 by 48 inches before washing, with roadways 2 3/4 inches wide and blocks just over 16 inches by 8 1/2 inches. I hand quilted with cotton thread, following the lines of the roads, windows, and edges of buildings. I don't remember what batting I used, but I'm thinking Warm and White. (This was made in pre-documenting, pre-blogging days. At least I did remember to take photos and keep the master pattern.) It was one of the last baby quilts I made with hand quilting or tying. Now I do free motion quilting on most of the quilts I make for kids. The binding is the same pattern as the backing fabric. 

J is about 2 1/2 years old now, and he uses the quilt just the way I imagined he would. 

I'm linking up today with Quiltin' Jenny for Throwback Thursday.