Sew & Tell Friday: Choo Choo Blanket

I finished a bag and did a real binding on my Toile Lone Star and I've been working on another Black Eyed Susan (nine blocks instead of four), but the only project I'm going to sew and tell is my Choo Choo Blanket. Two of my favorite people are having baby boys soon (Kellie is having TWO of them... AT THE SAME TIME) and I wanted to do something special for them. I thought a train applique with different textures would be cool, but I wasn't sure how to do it.

I found a weird chip board "book" in the shape of a train engine at Robert's Craft. (What the heck do you do with five pieces of chip board shaped like a train engine?) I traced it onto interfacing and sewed it onto my fabric. That SO did not work. Too many little corners and curves. Then I found one small sheet of double sided interfacing. Perfect! I just cut the train engine out with interfacing on it, stuck it to my fabric, and sewed a zig zag around the whole engine. Enough tell! Here's how it turned out:

This is cute Gus modeling for me. He lives across the street and he wasn't doing anything...

The trains are made with yellow corduroy and the puffs of smoke are white minky. I'm planning to go CRAZY with the textures on the next ones I make. It's going to be legendary.

I used two layers of needled cotton batting and did the quilting on my machine.

Not bad for a first draft. Can't wait to see what everyone else has done for Sew & Tell Friday.