Firefighter Quilt

The Firefighter, 74" x 85"

A couple of years ago, while on vacation in North Carolina, I found firefighter themed fabric. A friend of mine was a volunteer firefighter and comes from a family of professional firefighters. I had no idea what I might do with the fabric but I bought some of each design hoping that inspiration might come to me. 

It took almost 2 years for that inspiration to hit. I don't really enjoy working with panels, or commercial print fabrics, anyway. But one day my friend mentioned that her husband was building a garage with a "man cave". I thought this quilt would be perfect for his man cave.

I put it together on another vacation to the same beach in North Carolina. It was a perfect project for beach week.
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I couldn't make a quilt with no hand dyed fabric so I dyed a gradient for the back.
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I chose a simple pinwheel block for the pieced component to frame the panel.
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To make the pieced blocks fit I had to make "coping borders". Between the yellow and the pinwheel blocks, there's a border in the Fire Dept fabric. The side border is much narrower than the top and bottom borders. Unless you are looking for it, I don't think it's noticeable.
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Originally I planned to quilt it in black thread but I knew it would look awful on the dyed back. I eventually settled on red thread. It's not visible on most of the front and I actually like it against the panel.
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Here's how the quilting looks from the back. I love it!
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Table runner, 15.5" x 40"

I had some leftover fabric and didn't want to put it back in the stash, so I made a table runner for her. The table runner is square, it's the photo that's wonky.
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