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

You can check the latest prices at Amazon by clicking on the links below:

• 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 my friend Chris.  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.