Toddler Quilt – Heath’s Quilt – Construction Machines

For my great-grandson Heath’s 3rd birthday, I made him this quilt made from construction machine panels.

My daughter-in-law, Stacy, gave me a panel of construction vehicles.  I already had another Construction vehicle panel that I was planning to make for one of my other great grandsons, Connor, and she thought I might like to make 2 quilts while I was on the go.

At the time I didn’t realize that she had actually given me two panels.

When I got it home and had a look at it,  not realizing that I had 2 panels, I set about working out how I was going to tackle this.  I  kept thinking it was an odd-shaped pane,l as it was too wide and too short and it was from that point of view that I made the quilt.

This ‘Construction’ panel was designed by Nancy J. Smith and Lynda S.Milligan for Alvin Inc.

TOOLS USED IN THIS TUTORIAL

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• Creative Grids Ruler 8½” x 24½” 
• Olfa 24″ x 36″ double-sided healing mat
• Olfa 60mm rotary cutter
• Oliso Iron
• Gutermann Sew-All thread

What I Did

After laying out the panel, Paula and I had a round table talk about what to do and we decided that there was only one thing for it and that was to separate the pictures into individual blocks.

• So I cut around each of the vehicle blocks, leaving a ¼” seam where possible so that there was a bit of a buffer around each picture.
• Then I lay the blocks out and moved them around until I was happy with the layout.

Before going any further I had to decide on how big I wanted the centerpiece and the overall quilt to be. I decided to make the center 45½” wide and 63″ long. This meant building up the center blocks to these measurements.

•  As the blocks were different sizes I had to add sashing to the smaller blocks to make them the same size as the largest block in each row.
•  Once each of the blocks had their sashing added it was time to add some fillers to make the rows 45½” wide.
• This was done by adding some contrasting stripes, some checkerboard panels and some horizontal stripes.
• The horizontal stripes are only ½” wide so they were fiddly to make.
•  If I made another one like this I would try and find some striped material to cut on the diagonal to get the same effect.

• Once all the rows were the same height and width, I sewed them together with light blue 2″ sashing between them.

• Close-up of the joining pieces and the sashing.

• Now that the centerpiece was sewn, it was still short so I built up the ends with black and yellow checkerboards to bring it up to 63″.
• Then it was just a matter of adding the borders. I went with a 1″ black border to frame the centre panel, then added a 3″ yellow border and finally a 4½” blue border.

• I ended up not having enough of the dark blue for the backing and so I decided to make it multicolored to use up the material I had on hand.

• The quilt was professionally quilted by Chris, the longarm quilter from Sew ‘n Sew Sisters.  She quilted the quilt with construction trucks which absolutely suit the theme of the quilt.
• Here you can see the detail on the back of the quilt.

• I then bound the quilt in yellow to finish it off.

I have to say I am very pleased with the result.