A Panel, a Kit, and a Plan

 At the PCQ sew day for making boy quilts last week, they had "kits" made up, mostly panels that had been donated combined with fabric from their donated stash in coordinating colors. I pulled a kit that had this panel: 

This is half of it, actually; there's a different train and another border on the other half.  I had an idea but I didn't have sketch paper or graph paper with me at the sew day and it was too difficult to execute my idea without a plan.  So I worked on something else and brought this one home to work on. 

The other fabrics in the kit are a soft mottled creamy yellow background, a brown crosshatch, and two Civil War repro reds. Great colors with this panel, well chosen by whoever put the kit together. But the yellow and the brown are off-cuts from backings, long strips, not very wide, so I'll have to plan carefully. The reds are actual quarter yard cuts. 

The plan is to add railroad tracks to make the quilt wide enough, frame the panels with the two reds, and fill in around the panels and the borders with the yellow. I'll have enough of the yellow, but just barely enough so I can't afford to make cutting mistakes! 

The tracks still need their rails; I'll use black from my stash. I'll fill in with strips and borders cut from the yellow.

I found the perfect stripe in my stash for binding so I'll go ahead and provide the binding to go with this top when I turn it in. Someone in the club who's already certified on the long arm will quilt it and the club has people who will bind their donation quilts, or they can pass it back to me for binding. 

Until recently I'd never worked with panels, but now I've used two of them in donation quilts. I can't say I love working with panels, but I'm glad to have another skill in my toolbox. 

Link up: Quilt Fabrication