I am sandwiching my train baby quilt with Quilters Select Free Fuse.  I have for many years pinned my quilts with safety pins.  After that I used Pin Moors and T pins.  Then I switched to fusible batting.  With Free Fuse I can choose any kind of batting.  It is my new favorite.  

I had some Laurel Birch fabric left over from a baby quilt and when I saw the train pattern in a recent Quiltmania publication, I decided to make another baby quilt.  Our neighbor just had a baby in November.  I pattern called for six inch square centers in the train cars but the animals on the fabric were much smaller so I resized the blocks.  The smaller blocks made to quilt very small so I drafted the industrial cars from some coloring book pages found on the internet.  I went to add the borders and pulled out a book to find an approximation of the amount of fabric needed for the binding and decided to made a pieced border instead of the solid border.  The arrow border is simple but it had bias edges so it was a bit of a problem.  I am using this carrot fabric that was from my Becky stash for the backing.  I have tried to use if a number of times and it did not quite work.  On to sandwiching and binding.

Good Fortune Border

The border idea is from Bonnie Hunter's String Fling Cover Quilt.  I plan to add a row of half blocks on the top and bottom of the quilt so that it will serpentine.  I also have a faux batik of gold fish that will be at the four corners of the quilt.  I need 10 half blocks, some quarter blocks, and the 4 corner blocks and the top should be done.

 I decided against the fish batik and finished the corner by completing the circle with a bridge block.

 The border is complete.  Now to contemplate the quilting.

Good Fortune Update

I decided to add a top and bottom row from Bonnie Hunter's String Fling and then finish it with half blocks for a serpentine border.  Now I am contemplating the quilting.  The kites look like I can have some fun.  I want something simple stitching but enough for dealing with all the bias cuts in the strings.  Hummmm.

Bonnie Hunter Good Fortune

I have been fortunate to have been the recipient of a stash of fabric.  Colon cancer took the life of my sister-in-law but due to the generosity of my dear brother I was the recipient of the stash.  Most of it I would characterize as woven or home spun.  It was definitely Becky style.  The majority of the fabric I selected for this quilt are plaids.  I did use the paint chips to select my fabrics but now that I have sewn a few of the clues, I have noticed that my patches are not as bright and bold as the color samples even though the colors look to me to be like the paint samples.  I wonder if I am going to be disappointed in the result.  I think it may be much more subdued.  I am using orange prints because I did not have orange plaids in the stash so that will either brighten up the quilt or look like it does not belong.  That is the fun of mystery quilts.  We will see what we will see.  I remember my first log cabin quilt.  I had so much fun rearranging the blocks and was so surprised at the results.  That was great fun.  On to clue 3.  I have die cut the rectangles and the half square triangles to make the chevron blocks and the bonus blocks.  I hope my plan works.

Bonnie Hunter Five my way

 I was going to work on Clue #3 but decided to download Clue #5.  I still had my blue fabric out and about so I decided to skip to Clue #5.  I had pulled oranges from my scrap box so that was also handy just waiting for my on a book case. I was rifling through some other oranges I had previously selected and noticed my hand painted samples that I had done in a dye class from year's back.

I decided I would cut them up for Clue # 5.

There is far fewer needed of this kind then the others so I will start working on this tomorrow.  I  need some blue cut into strips and I am ready to piece.  Fun with mystery quilts.  

Bonnie Hunter's Good Fortune Mystery

I took my red and white patches to DE with me and finished the four patches for Clue #1.  Tonight I finished HST's for Clue #2.

What's next?