Look What Laura Made: A Quilt for Brooks

With one quilt already under my belt I couldn't wait to get started on the next one and I knew just who the recipient would be!   My cousin (in law)/best friend Krystal is currently expecting her second baby boy and I was eager to get a head start on the quilt for him.  I found the cutest fabric set and got to work! 

I learned the hard way that you shouldn't just start sewing because you are really excited and can't wait to see how it turns out and sure it'll all come together... you know that saying "measure twice, cut once?"  Ya, I think the same can be said for quilts.  I mapped out blocking for the portion of the quilt below and went ahead and sewed it all together before I figured out what I would do for the rest of the quilt.  Yes, it looks cool, and yes in the end it all did work out but if I had mapped it out ahead of time it would have been a little easier!  Oh well, you live, learn, and then blog about it so you won't make the same mistakes next time!! 

After I sewed the middle portion together and mapped out the remaining squares I sewed team all together. This part was a little tricky because of all of the various corners and intersections (punny.. get it, bc its a car quilt...) but I was able to make it work and logged this down as a lessons learned for the next go round! 

Instead of stitching the ditch this time, I used the "swirly" stitch (number 63 on my Singer Stylist) to quilt the three pieces together. I really liked this better because I didn't have to worry about coloring sewing outside the line and it looked super cute! Double points. 

Photo found here

I found a tutorial on Cluck Cluck Sew on how to machine bind your quilt and I LOVE it!  It is very easy to follow and I think that this binding actually looks much nicer than the first quilt I did.  (And so you know, I did ask Tiphany if she'd let me take back the quilt and "fix" the binding, but being the wonderful woman she is, she said she loved it the way it is!) 

Here's the final product! Can't wait until Brooks is here to snuggle up in it!