The One Where I Battle a Baby Quilt for an Entire Day

One of my quilt club's service projects is making and donating baby quilts to our hospital's NICU. At our last retreat some of the members shared a quick and cute baby quilt that used only four fat quarters. I completed a quilt top that weekend and it's been sitting in my closet since the summer waiting to be quilted.

Since we had a meeting tonight and there was no school today I decided I'd free motion quilt it. The last quilt I attempted free motion on was this quilt for my nephew. I like the look of free motion better than straight line and want to get better at it. Besides, I don't always have the money(nor do I want to wait) to take my quilt to a long arm quilter.

So many things went wrong with this one. I had tension issues, picked out quilting four times before deciding that "chicken feet" on the back weren't that bad. And then I made the decision to apply the binding by machine. It was so not a good decision! Someday I will learn to stop trying that.

But I did manage to finish it. Hours later.

Despite the fact that I spent the entire day working on this quilt in order to turn it in at tonight's meeting, dork that I am, I could not bring myself to present it to the group. No one else brought finished baby quilts, when normally there are 5-10 a meeting, and I wasn't about to let this one be the only one shown.

I do love this cute dog print from JoAnn's.

My plan is to make another, much more fabulous quilt to turn in with this one at the next meeting. I figure the fabulous one will overshadow all the mistakes in this one. Not that the ladies in my quilt club would say anything, they are wonderful, nonjudgmental and understand I am nowhere near their level yet. I, however, am my own worst critic.

It actually looks pretty decent...if you don't look too close and definitely not at the back. Or the binding. 

Even though I made a lot of mistakes and took waaaay too long to finish, it was a good practice and hopefully, the recipients won't notice the mistakes that are glaring at me.

I plan to add a full tutorial of this at some point, but in the meantime, I think you can figure out fabric placement, so here are the Measurements that you'll need:

FQ Number 1: Full FQ for center (18"x22")
FQ Numbers 2 and 3(here I've used the same fabric for both): 2 Pieces 8.5" x 22" and 2 pieces 8.5" x 18"  These will make the border around your focus FQ.
FQ Number 4: 4 8.5" Squares for the corners.

Again, you can see how this goes together in the first photo...super fast and super easy! Add a backing, quilt it, sew on the binding and there you go!