After making the challenge quilt with the Prince Georges Historical Quilt Society in 2004, I offered to host a swap to do a challenge quilt with the Cyberbees, a group of quilters I correspond with on the internet. This was done in 2005. Twelve ladies took part in this swap of six 6" calico squares and I told them they could add up to three fabrics plus a background. This time I had 72 squares to incorporate into my quilt.
I decided to make a wall hanging for my family room which has a railroad theme thanks to both of my sons' interest in trains. I designed a train to applique and for my extra fabric (it did not need to be solid) I used the June Taylor photo fabric and printed the heads of my twelve grandchildren on the fabric and placed them in the windows of the engine, passenger cars and caboose.
First I chose two coordinating fabrics for each of the cars in the train and then used the remaining squares to make a "Flying Geese" pieced border for the outside edge of the wall hanging. In order to use as much of the fabric as possible, I cut leaves and flowers from the leftover scraps of the squares and appliqued them as a flower garden along the tracks.
The little engineer is Emerson, and passengers in the first car are my three oldest grandchildren: Tamara, Lindsay and Matthew, while the second car is occupied by their younger siblings: Schuyler, Marina and Xander. The last car has the three children of my younger daughter: Joshua, Michaela and Braden and the caboose is occupied by the youngest grandchildren (at the time) Sebastian and Fiona. We now have two more!
