Baby Quilt Friday!: Training Wheels

It's Baby Quilt Friday!--not exactly the Friday I was hoping to post on, though. Okay, not a Friday at all. Can we just start pretending here? Play along with me, will you? Please?

This particular Friday I'm introducing this quilt, "Training Wheels," from The Little Box of Baby Quilts. Really the only quilt in the bunch of 20 that has a super-duper lean toward one gender. But, you know, girls can like trucks, too. For instance, I like pink trucks. I like them best without the truck bed in the back, and when they look like Volkswagen Passats. Yeah, that kind of truck. Those are my favorite.

But, since my little Jack liked trucks at the time I was designing--and still does--I made this quilt:

From The Little Box of Baby Quilts, copyright 2007 Jenny Wilding Cardon/That Patchwork Place. Machine quilted by Cheryl Brown.

I had planned to make smaller wheels for these trucks. I made a few. But the pieces were too darn tiny to sew without frustration. I thought of the end user--someone actually following the pattern--and felt sorry for them. So I got to thinking about trucks. What other kind of trucks were out there? Dump trucks, garbage trucks, fire trucks . . . MONSTER trucks! Made up of half truck and half gigantic wheels. That immediately solved the problem. There are four half-square triangles per wheel, but they are big enough to sew without stress.

One of my life's goals. Sew without stress. I have a sewing mantra (is that weird?). If you are swearing at your project, you're doing it wrong. Sometimes I chant it out loud. The chanting helps, especially when I realize I've just given an innocent, happy piece of fabric a horrendously dirty tounge-lashing.

This quilt also comes with a built-in race track around the border, created with yellow perle-cotton stitches. Perfect for racing whatever kind of truck the little one you quilt for likes best. All trucks, cars, buses, vans, and the like are welcome. Even pink Passat trucks. If you can find them.

You can view more quilts from the "little box" here, watch a video about it here, and read more about each quilt here.

The next time I write a Baby Quilt Friday! post--let's face it, the "I eat, sleep, and dance to the rhythm of two little boys" phase is in its most grandiose swing ever, and showing no signs of slowing--it'll be about a quilt called "Little Log Cabin." From happy yellow to pastel pink to ouch-that's-hot! pink to blazing bright orange and back again. I don't know if babies will be able to fall sleep with it, but I think they'll like it when they're awake! Hope to see you back here soon.