Cuddly Construction Vehicles

I had two large graphic fabric panels of construction equipment that I wanted to sew into throws rather than wall hangings. My son works in the design/construction business and his son is just emerging from a toddler's crazy-about-building-vehicles phase. True, the Minecraft video game has somewhat superseded my now seven-year old grandson's big equipment infatuation. I am slightly late in sewing to meet his peak interest level. I may have missed my window, but I just could not let these big graphic panels go to waste. These were the two panels I had by Riley Blake Designs: A CAT® Dump Truck and a CAT® Excavator. Each is 36" tall and 43" wide and is digitally printed. Reluctant to abandon these stunning fabrics, I justified my belated sewing of these panels by couching them as a father/son throw duo. As throws they needed to have a soft backing and soft borders in order to be cuddly and tactilely desirable. Thinking snuggly fabrics for the backing would be appealing, I bought some minky in camel for the dump truck and some minky in ash for the excavator and wrapped it around to the front. 

Hoping to expand my skills by doing the wrap-around self-binding technique, I suspected the corner miters would be my challenge. As it turns out, they were a piece of cake when I found a YouTube tutorial from ShabbyFabrics for a baby receiving blanket. Using Cuddle® by Shannon fabric for the backing was my waterloo. Per the Missouri Star Quilt Company:

The term minky refers to any plush microfiber fabric made from 100% polyester fibers. Cuddle is the brand name of minky fabric by Shannon fabrics. While you may find minky fabric for sale that isn’t made by Shannon, the truth is, Shannon Cuddle fabric is the highest quality minky fabric around. 

I had purchased Cuddle® minky for the plush, and so skimping on fabric quality was not an issue. I knew to be cautious with this project because I remembered I had sewn with a minky fabric before with not-particularly-stellar results as described in my 11/16/17 post. One of the four mitered corners on that project had been a disaster. This project all four of my miters were great. It was sewing the Cuddle® to the cotton along the four straight edges that was a struggle. The difference in stretchiness between a flexible minky fabric and a woven cotton fabric was a challenge to be conquered when seaming the two together. I pinned the dickens out of the seam, and still had problems. Here is my analysis of the issue.

Cuddle® is 60" wide and is very stretchy perpendicular to the selvage (white words in previous diagram) but — to my surprise — very non-elastic parallel to the selvage, even after cutting off the selvage. The woven cotton panels were the opposite; stretchy perpendicular to the selvage (black words in previous diagram) and stiffer parallel to the selvage (black words in photo). The flexible Cuddle® direction against the straight of grain of the woven I could handle with sufficient care, which as it turns out, were the shorter, vertical sides. I eased in the Cuddle®. The crossgrain of the woven against the unforgiving Cuddle® direction was a disaster, which as it turns out were the longer, horizontal sides. I tried with the woven fabric against the feed dogs and the Cuddle® against the feed dogs, either configuration to no avail, even though I had been scrupulous with cutting the two fabrics equal lengths. Easing in the woven was not working. I finally clipped tiny snips along the length of the Cuddle to introduce a bit of give and tugged my heart out. It did not come out perfect but certainly very acceptable. The  following photo is before any pressing or quilting. Closeups of the lower left and upper right corners reveal that the mitered corners were not a problem.

The ash-backed excavator went more smoothly than the camel-backed dump truck. I knew where the trouble spots were and that they were not at the miters where I was concerned. I'd cut the Cuddle® bigger by 11" on all fours sides of the woven panel. The wrap around borders were a generous 5½" wide. The finished throws measured ~54" wide by ~47" tall.

The next step I feared was quilting the center region. My plan was to just outline the truck and the excavator to hold the backing and front fabrics together and call it good. Mainly, I just wanted to smooth out those wrinkles. Theoretically, since there are no feed dogs on my long arm, there should be fewer issues. I practiced first with some Cuddle® scrap and the test worked out smoothly enough that my concerns were not justified. I also added some freeform lines contouring the clouds, or more specifically, the billows of stirred up dust. As a finishing touch, I did add a label with my name and the year on the lower front corner of each throw, using dark brown grosgrain ribbon.

Father and son both liked the gifts. Dan and William snuggled up together to watch football. Then my grandson decided he liked both throws and appropriated his dad's excavator as well as his own dump truck. William wrapped the dump truck around himself as a cape when he climbed the stairs to bed.

Seeing the reception the throws got, I was glad I had persevered in making them, even though I was at the outer reaches of a child's window of interest. Grudgingly, I even admit that the fluff and furry bits scattered throughout my sewing room, left behind from the Cuddle® plush, were worth the mess.