Charity Quilt Challenge: Dalmations at the Firehouse

So what did I do with the fabrics donated to our guild to make a charity quilt I described in my last post?  I added some fabric with Dalmations with fire fighting equipment and used the red and black fabrics to make 5 little firehouses!  (I love the Dalmation in the kid's pedal fire engine toy truck)!

I put in the thin blue strips to break up dark fabrics and add interest.  Once I hung up the quilt I realized they looked like the poles the firefighters use to slide downstairs in a firehouse! I also added the strip of light blue Kona® cotton to the fabrics I was given. 

The back is the blue and tan leaf fabric which is the "sky" next to the roofs of the firehouses.

This quilt was a lot harder than I thought it would be.  These darker colors out out of my typical color palette and I struggled with to make this work.  I did a lot of un-sewing!! Initially I put in panels of the light blue and tan leaf fabric.  Those lighter panels pulled the eye away from everything else going on in the quilt. I wanted them to stay but when I took them out the quilt came together!

I used free motion quilting on this quilt.  There is a brick/block pattern in the "walls" of the firehouses, scallops like shingles on the black triangles next to the red peaks of the firehouses. There are some words quilted into the larger solid blocks, "firehouse", "puppies", "fire engine", mixed with some loops and meandering.

This quilt really was a challenge for me, but I'm really happy with the finished quilt.