Christmas Cars

This Christmas-themed panel caught my eye. I liked the atypical christmas colors –  yellow, gray, and black with red instead of the classical red and green mix. The twist on the recently popular theme of a red pickup truck carrying a Christmas tree appealed, too. 

I also had a mug and tray pair I'd bought at HomeGoods and a pillow from Crate&Barrel I picked up at the end of last season, both with vehicles. This year I added a black and white Merry Christmas sign from a local shop. I had all the accessories. Now I just needed to make the quilt.

I knew I wanted to make the panel go farther than its WOF by 24", so I needed to intersperse other blocks between each car. Yet I did not want the interspersed blocks to become the attention grabbers and distract from the featured cars with Christmas trees. I was inspired by a sample quilt I saw at a Brentwood show in August of 2017 (my post dated 8/21/17) that used quarter square triangle blocks in monotone shades of blue alternated with creature images.

I took a photo of one taxi block and went to my "design program", aka Microsoft PowerPoint, and alternated repeats of the featured panel with quarter square triangle blocks. I had to play with the color arrangement to get the secondary pattern of diamonds I so liked in my inspiration sample.

Then – imitation being the highest form of flattery, right? – I auditioned shades of gray for those quarter square triangle blocks just as my inspiration had used shades of blue. The grays I'd bought were shown in my post for October 2nd at the September Pleasanton Quilt, Craft, and Sewing Festival. Those grays were b-o-r-i-n-g... big yawn! But I did like, and decided to incorporate, a deep gray solid with a secondary weave of goldish thread throughout that gave it a nice sheen. Instead of two other shades of gray I chose a yellow and a red that went well with the vehicles. Merry Go Round in yellow is a Sandy Klop design for American Jane Patterns. Between the Lines in red is from RJR studios.

I noted that each car “square” was not quite square, measuring wider than tall by ⅜". The dimensions of each car block, with its grey frame and raw edges as cut apart, were  8¼" wide by 7⅞"tall. Making hourglass blocks would offer a slight challenge. The hourglass block, once the diagonal seams were sewn, would need to be the exact same size as the slightly rectangular raw edged car blocks.

I remember seeing somewhere that the cutting size for a square intended to become a half square triangle or quarter square triangle needed to add ⅜" for the seam allowance in each diagonal cut, assuming a 45° angle. With two diagonal cuts I needed to add ⅜" + ⅜" for a total of ¾" in both dimensions. I cut a sample block with dimensions of my car block but added ¾" in height and ¾" in width. For my trial run with scrap fabric, I cut two pieces of fabric 9" wide x 8⅝" tall. The trial block finished 8⅛" wide by 7⅞"tall. It was a bit narrow in width so I tweaked the width by ⅛" and tried again. A 9⅛" wide by 8⅝" tall cut dimensions made a second sample that perfectly matched the dimensions of the raw car block at 8¼" wide by 7⅞"tall. This means the two seams intersecting in the center are not at right angles to each other... just off enough to require vigilance to sew the correct triangles together. The triangles are not identically sized as they would be in a perfect square; sides and top/bottom triangles are different and I had to keep track of which was which when sewing those bias seams.

In my case, the yellow triangles were always side triangles and red triangles were mainly top/bottom triangles except for along the side edges. Gray could be either so I had to be super careful and label them religiously. Since the red was striped, that was a helpful clue. My caution paid off because my seams met at the points and I love those secondary charcoal diamonds that resulted from my planning. But my 5-block-wide by 5-block-tall top, once the vertical and horizontal ¼" seams were sewn, would measured 39¼" wide by 37⅜" which was smaller than desired. At this point I have no clear picture what the end goal is, only that I thought bigger would be more useful. Extended the charcoal diamonds out into a vertical edge border would be a nice finishing touch. Adding red triangles to protrude into top and bottom borders would add completeness, also. To keep my quilt in portrait format, I would also needed to add an additional header and footer to offset the greater width.

I remember taking a class in seminole patchwork and thought the diamond pattern it created would echo the secondary diamond pattern of the quilt top thus far. I had to scratch my head a bit, but I did figure out how to get the red stripes to continue to be vertical and not at a slant. I would put this diamond chain insert only at the top, striving for artsy, and deviating a bit from up/down symmetry. Plus I was scraping the bottom of the barrel for the charcoal gray. Look closely and you will see that some of these small squares are themselves pieced. Fortunately it is camouflaged by the grain of the interwoven gold threads.

I extended the triangles of the red stripe over the two top car block into the charcoal gray header and footer, and added red triangles along the vertical edges.

So here is where I am now. The quilt top measures 47" wide by 62" tall. I think I want to frame it with some perimeter sashing but am currently undecided. Making a quilt from a kit goes so much quicker. I don't have to pause to think, nor stop to take time to make decisions. This quilt will not be completed in time for Christmas 2019 but it will be worked on during this Christmas season. That is  maybe an even better yuletide treat.