Pieced Vehicles – Improv Style!

Ambulance Tutorial

1. You’ll need a background material and solid scraps, as well as a black fabric with white dots for
the wheels.

2. Rough cut the shapes of the front window, cross and some surrounding white pieces. It’s better
to use pieces that are bigger, rather than smaller. Everything will be trimmed. Also, it will look a
complete mess until it is nearly completed, so don’t worry! You can always rip out seams and
adjust as needed - I do frequently.
3. Join a white strip to the top of the window.

4. Join a white strip onto the front part of the window. Trim the fabric behind to a ¼ inch. You can
trim edges straight either before or after you sew on each piece.

5. Trim the white fabrics ½ inch away from the blue.

6. Sew the background fabric, in my case tan, to the two white strips you just joined to the blue.

7. This is what it will now look like. This is the front window of your vehicle.
8. Trim below the window into a straight line, following the base of the window. Then sew a tan
and white rectangle together and add them below the window. This is the front part of the
ambulance. The rectangles do not need to be exactly the size you want – they will get trimmed
later.

9. Next we’ll work on the red cross for the back of the ambulance. Sew a strip of red between two
white rectangles.
10. You’ll need to trim the seam allowances to 1/8 inch so you can press them to the center of the
red strip without a lot of bulk.

11. Cut the piece you just made down the center so you can add the cross part. Trim the seam
allowances again.
12. Square up and trim down your cross block.

13. Add white all around your cross block.

14. Now we’ll make the light for the top of the ambulance. Sew a small yellow rectangle to a strip
of background fabric. Then add larger tan rectangles on either side. Keeping in mind seam
 allowance, trim this set down to get it ready to add to the top of your white section of
ambulance.

15. Trim the white rectangle, which is now the back of the ambulance (cross included), to about the
size you want, and join it to the light section. Audition what it will look like next to the front of
the ambulance you made earlier and decide how you want them to line up.

16. Join the front and back of the ambulance. Trim the top and bottom of your block straight.
17. Add background fabric to the bottom of your ambulance. Square up your block.

18. Now to add the wheels. Trace a circle onto fusible web. I used a spool of thread.

19. Fuse this onto the back of your polkadot fabric. Try to center the white dot in the middle of
your circle.

20. Cut out and fuse onto your ambulance. When I have several vehicles pieced, I will machine
blanket stitch in black around all the tires. This looks like tread on the tires. Now, look what you
made! Every vehicle will be unique. Next I would sash my vehicle in more background fabric
and then square up to a 12.5 inch block, but you can do what you like. More vehicle tutorials to
come!