Pay It Forward

One of our members at quilt guild came to our meeting a few months ago with odds and ends she discovered while cleaning either her stash or her mothers.  One of the items she showed us was this  pillowcase that was stamped with trains and train tracks and the train tracks were partially painted with embroidery paints. 

I opened my big mouth and said, "Oh, my neighbor just gave me a whole set of those embroidery paints."  In the blink of an eye, the pillowcase was in my lap.   Weeks, then months went by with the pillowcase in my "To Do" basket.  From time to time I would look at it and think I really need to finish this but then what would I do with it?  My bedroom decor is not quite into trains and I have a little grand nephew who might be able to use it but ...a pillowcase?  As I was running ideas around in my head I thought wouldn't it be nice if I could find some train fabric that looks like those two trains on the pillowcase.  Then I could make a simple child's quilt and put it together.  Thanks to the wonders of Internet, I found the perfect fabric.

It's called "Train Crazy" from RJR Fabrics.  And a further search led me to River City Quilts in Mankato where they had it on hand.  I always like to save the shipping costs whenever I can.   I cut the train strips and inserted other fabrics to come up with  a child size quilt.  I fussy cut the train signs from the top strip and fused them to the black fabric and zig-zagged them down.

You can see that the top two black strips are not quite done.  One thing I have trouble remembering when I blog is to take the picture before I do something.  LOL

After all the applique was done, I used a poly batt and put on a red and tan plaid backing.  I stitched in the ditch for the quilting and with the poly batt, it made for a nice cushy little quilt.  Next, I finished painting the pillowcase.  I painted the trains the same color as the ones on the quilt.

And, here is the completed project of the quilt and pillowcase together.

This will be going back to my friend Ruth at the quilt guild to give to the Children's Crisis Nursery.  I hope some little boy will find comfort in having his very own quilt and dream about future train rides.  I hope there are still trains to ride when he grows up.