John's Army Quilt

As some of you may recall, about a week before John was born I got the brilliant idea to make a quilt for him. I had already received lots of blankets & quilts for him; most receiving sized & then my mom made him an adorable bigger sized quilt that will be perfect for when he actually sleeps in his full sized crib when we return to Germany.

I wanted him to have his own "special" quilt. I still have my baby blanket from when I was born & I wanted John to be able to have something that he could have forever; something that wasn't baby-ish. So, since I had a trash bag full of Nathan's old digi-print ACU's, I decided to use a top for part of the quilt. Then I went to Joann's & bought three more different kinds of fabric; a brown mink, a light blue flannel, and a tanish satin for the binding. I finished the quilt in a day- everything but the binding that is. It's had one edge sewn on for the past three months & now it's FINALLY finished :)

6"x6" squares with a quarter inch seam on all four sides

I'm not a very talented sewer. In fact, it was something I hated to do up until my sophomore year of college. When my friend Mandy found out she was having a little boy, I wanted to make him something cute so I made him a rag quilt that is somewhere between the size of a crib and a twin sized bed. So that tradition continued with my friends who got pregnant. However, I wanted to do something a little different for John and I'm glad I did. I had never worked with the minky fabric, ACU or the satin. Talk about a pain! I ended up ripping two seams out because I didn't pin the minky fabric well enough to the ACU or the flannel the first time. Once I figured that out I was good to go and it went pretty smoothly. I will however be practicing with the scraps of satin, mink and flannel though just because it's something I want to master.

The ACU has no give at all...The mink is very stretchy & the flannel is in between. Satin is just a pain :)

                                     

                                             The back 

Finished!

I'm happy that project is over. I think I'll make a girl quilt next- gotta get rid of Nathan's old uniforms somehow!