it's that time of life, i guess

I currently have 5 girlfriends who are pregnant! Two of them are with their second child! Well, as promised here, pregnant friends get baby blankets. I won't go into much detail, since I already did that post, but I wanted to share pictures of my latest sewing adventure.

This blanket is for my friend Cathy, over at Sparks Fly. They decided to decorate the nursery in blue and gray with elephants, which I LOVE. I scoured the Internet for good elephant flannel. I had decided that I wanted to do a more typical checkered quilt pattern this time, but trying to decide from online images what blues and patterns would look good together was tricky. Then I came across these pre-cut squares on Etsy. I figured, if they're sold as a set, the colors must go together. 

When I got the flannel squares, I laid them all out to make sure I liked the look. I debated a little bit, but ended up going with the classic pattern. I sewed the squares together one at a time into strips across, then sewed those strips together. This seemed like a logical thing to do at the time, but in retrospect, I should have pinned all 36 squares together first. This probably would have made the columns line up more evenly. 

After I got all the squares sewn together, I made my way to JoAnn Fabric to get the fabric for the back and edges. For the last blanket I made, I used red minky. I intended to get the same thing in blue, but none of the blue options seemed quite the right shade. Then I spotted another micro-fleece (not sure if it's technically considered "minky" or not) that was just the right blue/gray and super soft. I got 1.5 yards of it. 

At this point, I washed both the micro-fleece and sewn-together flannel squares to shrink them up before sewing them together. I cut the micro-fleece to 48"x48". Then I followed the same instructions I used before (video and text).

This micro-fleece was a little more difficult to work with than the red minky I'd used before. I think that's because it was a bit thicker and fluffier. My new sewing machine definitely does a good job of feeding the fabric. I'm slowly learning to trust it more. 

Anyway, here's the final product. I hope Cathy likes it as much as my other friend liked hers!