Day 7

Today, I cut out the 12 white squares from the white fabric. I had more than enough fabric, as I reduced the size from 10”x10” squares to 8”x8” squares. The supplies needed for this part were a scissors, ruler, white fabric, and fabric pen.

I laid out the fabric on a hard surface, making sure the fabric was not stretching. If the fabric hangs off of an end, it will pull on the fabric. Because cotton is elastic, if you measure or cut the piece when it is stretched out, it will shrink back to its original size once it is cut, leaving a smaller piece than you need.

Once the fabric was flat, I used the fabric pen and ruler to draw 8 ½” x 8 ½” squares.

The reason I am not cutting 8”x8” squares, is because I need to allow ¼” around the entire square for the seam. I only had a small area to work with, so I could only measure 2 squares at a time. The fabric ruler was very useful in making accurate 90 degree lines – something you would have trouble getting with a regular 12” ruler.

I would also like to point out that if you have a rotary mat and rotary cutter, it would be much quicker and easier to cut out the squares. However, since I am trying not to spend too much money, I chose to just use the ruler, pen, and scissors.

When an outline of the squares was drawn, I set the ruler and pen down, picked up the scissors, and cut along the lines.

The lines were not perfectly straight, but they do not need to me. The edges will be tucked under as part of the seam. However, I did make sure to check each piece against the ruler once it was cut to make sure I did not stretch out the material while marking the outline:

I did not have to re-cut anything (that is a first!), since all 12 of the pieces turned out to be the correct size.

Once this was done, I wet the edge of a sponge, and gently patted all of the edges to get rid of the blue ink.

If you pull at the fabric, even very lightly, the edges will fray. There is no need to apply pressure. Once the material is wet, the ink magically disappears! Here is an example of one square done the correct way and one (the frayed one) done the wrong way:

I tried to be careful not to fray the material, because even though I can just cut off any strings, every time the material frays, it shortens the size of the square. I know I am being picky here as a few strings really isn’t going to make a difference, but since this is the first thing I have ever sewn, I would rather err on the side of accuracy. :-) Now that the 12 white squares have been cut, I ironed out the wrinkles and put them on a pile.

Day 6

Today my fabric sheets arrived. YIPPEE!!! My sister had printed the graphics and pictures onto them, and after a few weeks of doing nothing regarding this project, I was VERY excited to see that package in the mailbox!!! :-)

The first thing I did was check out the colors, and they looked really nice!! It does not feel like a shirt that has been silk-screened. It just feels like the photos and graphics are a part of the fabric! I am very pleased so far!!

The fabric sheets had paper on the back, which needed to be removed. The paper is supposed to just peel off in one sheet.

However, I was rather disappointed in how much of the paper ripped and remained stuck to the fabric. In the first picture, you can see the paper ripping as I tried to peel it away from the fabric, and in the second, you can see part of the paper stuck to the back of the fabric sheet:

I tried to use water to get the back to peel off smoothly, but that was disastrous! I turned the wet sheet over and used my thumb to try and loosen up the paper that remained stuck, but all this accomplished was to run the colors on the other side of the fabric. :-(

I then tried wetting one sheet and peeling it that way. Whatever you do, do NOT try this!!! The paper did not even attempt to peel off. It simply ripped off wherever I tried to remove it:

With growing frustration, I then tried to peel the remaining paper off with my thumb keeping it dry, and this worked a little bit:

Luckily, more than 1/2 of the sheets pulled of cleanly, so I'm not sure what caused some of them to have so many problems. The goal at this point for any of the sheets with paper remaining on the back, is that when they are washed, the water will loosen up that paper, allowing it to separate from the fabric in the wash. Unfortunately, I will only have one shot at this...

In case you are wondering, the purpose for washing the material is to get rid of any chemicals and dyes on the fabric that could be harmful to the baby. In addition, it pre-shrinks the material before sewing it together, and it bleeds off the color of the photo and graphics, so the family does not have to worry about that when they wash the quilt for the first time. It also fades the color. Knowing what the colors will fade to allows me to match thread color much better, as well as will help me to pick out colors for the quilt that best match the colors of the graphics and photo.

I used one Shout Color Catcher sheet for each load of clothes, and washed them in cold water on "soft wash", keeping "like colors" together. Before I started, I remembered a problem that I had when I washed the white cotton fabric. The edges frayed off and ended up knotting the entire fabric into a ball. I had to cut all of the frayed edges off, which meant having about 1/8" less all around fabric to work with. It also caused very bad wrinkles in the fabric, that did not come out regardless of whether or not I used an iron.

Some of these fabric sheets do not have a lot of material that I can afford to waste, so I decided to do a little prep work prior to washing. I cut off as many strings as I could around the edge of the fabric to minimize fraying.

I also cut a 1/4" triangle off of each corner to prevent a string from fraying around the entire piece. My hope in doing this was to stop the fraying at each corner, saving most of the material from becoming a frayed mess. There were about 5 fabric sheets put into each load. I obviously could have fit them all in one load, but with all of the bright colors, I wanted to test in small batches. That way, if colors were to bleed, or the fabric did not hold up, I would only have ruined a few sheets (which could be redone), rather than ruining them all.

The first 2 loads were the 13 pieces of the black GT. I took the wet pieces out of the washer and inspected them. One of the sheets looked like it had a bit of bleeding:

Another sheet looked like the black car color changed to purple, green, and blue. There was another sheet in the second load that had problems with the color from wetting it when I tried to get the back off (as I mentioned above):

There were also 2 sheets with blue wheels, that looked like they should have been silver:

I was not pleased, but there was nothing I could do at this point. I threw the Color Catcher sheet out, noticing that it did not absorb much color - it remained basically white. This was odd, because I would have thought that if the colors were bleeding, these sheets would have absorbed that color and would be dark. Hmmm. I also noticed that some of the edges were quite frayed, but I believe that cutting the corners helped. Here is what a normal sheet looked like after a wash (before the frays were cut):

And this is what the worst frayed fabric sheet(s) looked like:

It just took a few minutes to cut off the frayed edges, throw away the Color Catcher sheet, and put them all in the drier.

While those sheets were drying, I started the next load, which contained the cars that will soon be appliqued to the white blocks. There didn't appear to be any major changes that needed to be made. Other than some fading of the color, there was not a lot of heavy bleeding. I was a little bit concerned with the red and white pieces, but took a chance. :-) Here is a before and after shot of the red and black GT's to give you an idea as to how much the sheets faded in the wash (not much):

One thing I would like to point out is that I had read in a few places that when drying new fabric, you should remove the sheets from the drier when they are still damp. Once they are completely dry, they have wrinkles in them that do not come out. Then, you would take the damp sheets, put them on an ironing board, and iron them flat:

I tried this both ways, and unfortunately, I had all of the same wrinkles regardless of when I pulled the sheets out of the drier - wet or dry. The good news is that with the iron, the wrinkles are quite minimal. Not to mention, the baby really will not care if his blankie has a few wrinkles in it. :-) And of course, he will be (hopefully) using the quilt - dragging it around, sleeping in it, playing on it, eating on it...

Because several pieces from the black GT looked like there was color bleeding or a change of color, I went to my saved picture, zoomed in to mimic the size I was looking at, and noticed that most of what I thought was bleeding, was actually the way it was supposed to look. It just looked odd because I had made the picture so large and it was as if I was looking under a microscope! There were 3 pieces that need to be redone, and I also noticed that I had forgotten to email 3 of the border cars to my sister to be printed. I emailed my sister the 6 pictures that I needed (which is okay because I had ordered more fabric sheets than I originally needed). I'm hoping my sister is able to print them and get them shipped back to me sometime this coming week. Between now and then, I have a lot to work on! This is the exciting part. Stay tuned!!! :-)

Day 5

Is it "two steps forward, one step back"? Or "one step forward, two steps back"? Either way, that is what happened this morning... I looked at the play side of the quilt when it was drawn to scale and was not happy with it. The white squares were too big! I decided to go through and re-size it using 8" squares and 1" color strips. This did take a lot of time, but in the end, I think it looks MUCH nicer this way!

The blocks won't be overwhelmingly large to the baby when he is playing on it, and there is a lot more "blue" space, so the cars in the white squares are no longer competing with the cars in the border. It is less congested, and when it hangs over the bed, the design will be on top of the bed and the border will hang off the sides of the bed, looking more like a quilt/blanket.

Yes, this meant having to resize all of the car graphics in the white squares and sending new documents to my little sister. (I truly hope I have not confused her!) Because they are smaller, I was able also able to put 2 cars on each sheet, meaning Lisa will only have to use 6 sheets for this part rather than 12. The bad news is that I already ordered the second set of sheets and it is (once again) too late to cancel them. If nothing else, she has a few spare sheets now in case something happens, like the color ink cartridge running out of ink...

The stores are open again, so I went to Michael's and Walmart to pick up a few additional supplies: an iron, a sewing machine - one that has multiple stitch options, a few scrap fabrics with designs to practice the applique, "Color Catcher" (which is to be used when washing the colorful fabric to trap the colors so they don't bleed on to the other fabrics - thanks for the tip Mom!), light-weight Heat N Bond (web fusing to use instead of having to pin the small pieces when I applique), a washout fabric pen (thanks for the suggestion Lisa!), and a few stick pins just in case... I guess I am a little bit sicker than I thought! After walking through the stores, putting items in the cart, and then unloading them, I feel like I just climbed Mount Everest!

Here is a picture of the new supplies. The sewing machine looks just like a jigsaw!!! I will have to learn how to use it this week, but I doubt it will be that difficult to figure out. :-)

This is turning out to be a much larger (and more complicated) project than anticipated (what else is new?). But I am hopeful that it will all work out!! Until then, all I can do is sit back and relax for a few days as I wait for the fabric to ship to Lisa's house, for Lisa to print the cars onto the fabric, and for her to then ship them back to me. Stay tuned!! :-)

Day 4

I have been under the weather with symptoms resembling pneumonia the past few days. :-( This is making it a bit of a challenge to get anything done, but I want to keep moving forward... If nothing else, using the lap top in bed is much more satisfying than simply trying to sleep. :-)

Yesterday, I found the type of fabric paper that I would need. But I have not ordered it yet. In order to do that, I need to know how many sheets I will need. (Printed Treasures are $20 for 5 sheets, so the last thing I want to do is order too many!)

Let's see... I have to figure out the size of the entire quilt, and then each piece. (That seems like the logical way to do it!) I will need to email the images in the exact size I need to my sister, so she doesn't have to do anything but print. The images will be placed in the correct size in MS Word documents. I can use more than one image on a sheet, as long as I leave at least 1/4" around the border of all images (this will be folded under when the pieces are cut and sewed to the quilt).

Baby quilts are typically anywhere from 25" x 36" to 60" x 60". They can be square or rectangular. I would like the quilt to be able to fit in the crib, but be able to fit comfortably over the youngster when he's a 2-4 year old toddler as well. (Might as well get some good use out of it!) A crib mattress is about 36" x 52". I would also like it to fit in a youth-sized bed. The size I chose is 10" x 10" for each white square, 1.5" x 10" for each colored strip, 1.5" x 1.5" for the small white squares, 2" showing for the background (on the play side) and 4" wide for the car border. This will total somewhere around 48" x 60" (4' x 5'). It should fit both the crib and a child's bed, while also being large enough to play on.

Now that I have the sizes, I used Power Point, made 10"x10" squares, and sized out each of the four cars that would go in the white squares. When this was done, I looked at the original Power Point design (which of course was not to scale). Power Point does not allow you to have a slide as large as the quilt will be, so I had to scale down to 1/2 size. Since the border and blue background will both be different blue patterns, I darkened the border to see the contrast. I do not think the thin red lines will be in the border, but I put them on here so you can easily see the border from the background. Here is the crib side to scale:

Once the design was to 1/2 scale, I simply doubled the border size and put these into Word documents. I could fit 4 of these cars on a sheet, so that will save on fabric paper! (In case you are wondering... The reason I use Word rather than IrfanView for the pictures, is because if I do anything to the image in IrfanView, the resolution of the image is drastically reduced. In Word, the resolution does not change, so when the images print, they will look sharper - especially the black Ford GT picture, which will be very large.)

Also, while doing the border cars, I noticed that the Tungsten (silver) GT had white stripes, when it should have had light silver/gray stripes. I also noticed that the red car had black stripes (I must have been sleeping while working on this). No big deal. I am just happy that I noticed it BEFORE the graphics were printed onto the fabric sheets, and I was able to make both changes without difficulty.

Then I emailed my sister the graphics and quantity for each - with detailed instructions on how to print them. I tried to cut the black GT photo into pieces that could be neatly sewn together, but was not able to do that - even the door was greater than an 8 1/2 x 11 fabric sheet, so I went ahead with the order for 4 packs of fabric sheets.

I spent a couple of hours online looking for stores that would inexpensively print the large black GT to the scale I wanted (about 26" x 36"). I found none in the US that were affordable or that would do the printing without making the entire quilt for you. So I started thinking again... I would have to find a way to do it myself.

That also means I would need more fabric paper! I contacted the place I had just ordered from (online, so no phone number), but their email reply was that even though I had just ordered the sheets 10 minutes ago and it is a holiday, it is too late to cancel or change the order. The problem is that I did not want to pay shipping twice. :-( Oh well. You win some, you lose some...

I used the high res photo and tried a variety of different ways to cut it up that would look okay once they were sewn together. The first time I did it, the pieces were too large for my comfort once they were put on the 8 1/2 x 11 Word documents. There was just 1/4" on the outside, so I tried again... The second time, the pieces were smaller and everything looked perfect, except one of the side pieces had just the edge of the black tire on it. This meant that I would have no where to sew it too (the 1/4" was supposed to be tucked underneath, so the tire had to be at least 1/4" on that piece). Third time's a charm! Here is what it looks like (the lines have been added so you can see where I will be sewing the pieces together):

Aside from cutting around the car, I will also have to cut through the windows and tuck that fabric underneath to keep the edges from fraying. This will be the most challenging part of this quilt, I believe. This is also more difficult than most of the quilts I've seen. Figures... But on a high note, I've finally found a use for my love of jigsaw puzzles! :-) Here are what the pieces look like all jumbled together. How good are you at puzzles?

I made sure each piece was still high resolution, and I put them on separate Word documents, and again emailed them to Lisa. (This meant having to order 3 more sets of the Printed Treasures.)

Day 3

Today is not only the last day of the year, but an exciting one at that!! I cleaned up the cars around the border, giving them more detail since the quilt will be big enough to show the detail. Actually, that's not entirely true... I redid all of the cars, starting over and doing the spokes on the wheels and the black part - this would be the same on all the cars. Then I colored each car again with more detail as shown in these pictures, and I exchanged them with the old pictures. You may think it is a waste of time to spend hours redoing the drawing and painting, but I don't want to do this 1/2 way. As the saying goes... "Go big, or go home." :-)

I also added a roundel decal with the number "6" on the Heritage GT (blue/orange). It looked too plain without this decal, and now it matches the Heritage GT that will be on the white squares.

The good news is that I am FINALLY finished with the drawing and design!!! :-)

There is a lot more that needs to be done though. I had to figure out how to get the picture and graphics on the quilt. Well, after spending another few hours online and making a zillion or so phone calls, I found out that I had a couple of options.

I could use silk screening (like you do with t-shirts). However, this would mean feeling the paint on the quilt (which might also peel off), and I wanted it to stay soft. The next option was to take them to a fabric dyer and have them dye it into the fabric. This is like creating custom fabric. The problem is that I am only making one quilt, and this option is only financially doable if you are using a large quantity of fabric. There are also a few places that will put the images on the fabric for you, but you are looking at spending a few hundred dollars that way. The problem with this third option (outside of the cost) is that the pictures come out as squares. The cars are not shaped like squares, and at that price, I would at least want them to cut the fabric (which of course I would end up having to do)...

The fourth option was to use fabric paper. It is actual paper-sized (8 1/2 x 11) sheets of fabric made of different material. They are not cheap, so I have to make sure I have them exactly the right size before applying the image to the fabric. You put them in an inkjet printer, and then after printing, let them dry for a few hours.

Before ordering the fabric paper, I needed to make sure that the fabric sheets with the images were washable. (I am hoping the baby uses the quilt and that it will be washed frequently.) I also needed high quality cotton, since that is what fabric the rest of the quilt will be. (If you are wondering why, I spent a lot of time online looking at different fabrics to use. Flannel with satin edges would be my top pick since it would feel amazing to a baby! However, obtaining the fabric in these materials would not be easy and would be much more expensive than cotton.)

Printed Treasures is the best fabric paper you can get, and it only costs a few extra dollars than the other brands. Now here is the difficult part... Because they are only 8 1/2 x 11, the black GT on the crib side of the quilt would need to be put onto multiple fabric sheets. I do not want to just do "quarters", because sewing them that way will look very bad. Instead, I am going to have to break the car into pieces (e.g., door, hood/trunk). These pieces will later be cut and appliqued to the quilt. (Yes, "applique" is a new word to me as well, but most of this quilt - all of the cars around the border and the cars in the white squares - will need to be appliqued.) I will get into all of that once the pictures and graphics have been printed.

The other thing I should note is that I have no inkjet printer. I gave my little sister a call, and since she has a printer at her home, I will have these sheets shipped directly to her. I asked her simply to wait at least a day before shipping them back to me so the ink could dry completely.

While I was online looking for ways to attach the graphics and photo to the quilt, I found a place in West Palm Beach called "My Quilt Shoppe". It is about a 30 minute drive, but sounded like "the" place to purchase supplies, so... I decided to swing by and pick up some fabric! On the way, I took a zip drive with the front and back of the quilt on it to The UPS Store to print a copy of each in color. (I figured that seeing the quilt would help with picking out the colors.) This turned out to be more of a hassle than it was worth! After a 10 minute drive, the store did not have a colored printer. (Why advertise that you make copies if you do not offer them in color?) Well, I asked them where I could have colored copies made, and I had to go to the next UPS Store a few miles away. For some reason printing 2 colored sheets of paper took that store 20 minutes, not to mention another 15 minutes of waiting in line! Don't people know that Christmas is over? :-)

Noting the time, I drove rather quickly to get to My Quilt Shoppe before they closed. While there, I used the colored copies to try and find good colors to use, but there were so many to choose from! I was completely lost. (This is even harder than clothes shopping!!) Despite that, the lady at the store was very helpful! We talked about the quilt project and looked through a number of different colors. She also threw in a few tips along the way. Even though they closed at 5 PM, we did not finish until 5:20, and she did not kick me out (as many larger stores do). Since this is not the first time I have noticed this, I thought I'd take a moment to point out that the personal 1-on-1 service you get at small "Ma and Pa" stores is amazing! I was very pleased! :-)

Getting back to shopping... Without seeing the actual images, it was difficult to know how strong the color would come out. In the end, I decided to leave the rest of the fabric behind until I finished the white squares. That way, I could bring the squares in and match them with the fabric once I finished with the applique (this was actually the lady's idea). I picked up a couple yards of white cotton fabric, a rotary mat (which was a supply listed on many of the quilting web-sites I visited), and a large rectangular see-through plastic ruler.

Once I arrived I home, I looked at the rotary mat and felt like an idiot. What a waste of $45! They are closed until 01/04/10, but I will try to return it then...

Day 2

This project is a little bit different than the GT model and will take a bit longer to make. Once both sides are finished, I will have to patiently wait until the baby is born to get the quilt embroidered. However, sewing it together should be the easy part, and not take too long.

Today I continued working on the design of the quilt. First I decided on four cars for the play area rather than six. Making the cars was difficult. I did not want to use photos, so I created four different graphics. I do not have Photoshop, so it was not easy to do! I opened the photos in "Paint", zoomed in, drew an outline around the entire car, and painted the background white.

Then I drew an outline around each part, and filled it in with whatever color I wanted that car to be. The first time I did this, I did not add any detail. It took about 45 minutes for each one. Then I realized the quilt would be much larger - each graphic would be about 6-7 inches long.

Therefore, I decided to redo them in a little more detail (like adding silver for the wheels and adding the headlights and taillights). This took a few hours for each one, but I believe it was well worth it! The Heritage GT (blue and orange) took the longest.

I drew the three "6" decals on the car, and added the gas cap, wheels, fog lights, and headlights. The stripes on the cars also took a little bit of time to do, but they look nice. The hardest part were the spokes on the wheels. I had to free hand these since I originally painted them solid black. It might have been more difficult to do, but I ultimately decided on the BBS lightweight aluminum wheels to match the wheels on the border cars. They did not come out perfect (but I don't think the baby will notice). :-) The black, yellow, red, and blue/orange (Gulf color) cars shown above are the graphics I made for the center of the "play side" of the quilt.

Once these were done, I knew that I had to change the design. When you put a lot of time into something, the last thing you want to do is toss it and start over, but I would prefer it to look good, so I decided to go for it. I took a break to eat one of my favorite foods - mac n' cheese. That put me back in a lovely mood and gave me energy to keep going! :-)

I went online looking at more patterns, not really seeing anything I liked. Time to get creative! Simple. It needs to be simple. (After all, I wouldn't want the little one to go crazy looking at a bunch of wild shapes!) The stars went bye-bye, and were replaced with white blocks surrounded by a border of color. This cleaned it up a bit, and the white won't compete with the colors of the cars. It also kept the colorful look, with the reds, yellows, blues, and greens.

I did receive a comment from one sister that the primary colors were too bright. After talking with a few quilters (and my wonderful mom), the general thought was that the lighter pastels are good for babies up to about 4-5 months. After this, they outgrow the lighter "baby" colors and prefer the brighter "primary" colors. Since I want the baby to use this for a few years, I will keep the primary colors, and also make sure it is big enough to use as a blankie for the first few years - not just the first few months. I might take my sister's advice and use a calmer blue for the background and border when I pick out the fabric. Either way, here is the new play side of the quilt:

I also decided to personalize the quilt a little bit by adding some embroidery. The embroidery will be in red, and will have the baby's name at the top (thick), and then the date of birth and weight underneath (thin). I do not have this information yet, which is why I will need to wait to put the final touches on until the baby is actually born in February. (Hmmm. I wonder if he will be born on Valentine's Day?) While I anxiously await the little one's arrival, there is still a lot that can be done! Here is what the crib side of the quilt will look like:

The background will be one blue fabric pattern and the border with the cars will be a different one. The lines shown here that separate the border from the background will not be there.

Day 1

As someone who loves children, when I found out my good buddy was finally going to be a dad, I wanted to make something really special for his new bundle of joy! :-) Just like with Ralphie, Chris and I became friends through a mutual interest – the Ford GT. The baby is going to be a boy and is due sometime in February. It is the end of December right now, so I have at least a month to put something together. But what?

When I had my little baby two years ago, one of my sisters presented her with a beautiful patchwork baby quilt. Another sister sewed a special baby bib for her. And yet another had a Christmas ornament made with her name and date of birth. There were a lot of ideas I had, but I wanted to try something I’ve never tried before, and I wanted something the baby could enjoy for a long time. So… I decided to make a baby quilt.

The first thing to do was figure out the design. Most baby quilts are one-sided, but I thought I would go all out and do a double-sided quilt. Why? Well, one side would be to put face up in the crib for the baby to sleep on, and the other side would be to put face up on the floor for the baby to play on. These designs would have to be very different, but still blend together.

I spent a bit of time looking at designs for baby quilts. I did not see any that I really liked, but I did get a few good ideas. I want something that incorporates the GT theme since it is a boy and that is the connection I have with his dad. :-) I also want something that can be washed a lot (as I expect it will get dirty playing with it on the floor), so it needs to be quite durable. And, I want something that is darker and less “flashy” on one side for the bedroom, but more colorful and playful on the other side to keep the baby entertained while playing.

Using Power Point, I drew up a few designs. The first design contained a star pattern made out of triangles and squares. I thought I could use primary colors for the stars (red, orange, yellow, and green) and use a blue background. The bright colors would be for the baby to play on. Inside the stars, I could put a different GT - different colors and different angles. I knew I needed a border that would be a different blue material, and considered a rainbow of colors around the border. I thought about using 3 different GT designs. As you can see in the image, I used regular shapes (sun, hourglass, and heart) with the different colors of the GT, to see how the colors would look together.

I wasn't sure about the border - the rainbow colors were too much. So, I tried using a black and white border, as well as a red/orange and green/yellow one. Then I thought it would look cool to have GTs around the border. I replaced the hourglass, sun, and hearts with actual GT's that I would later need to make patterns for, and also put GT's around the border. Here is what the second design looked like.

I then decided to make the border smaller, as it was competing with the images in the stars, and created a pattern for the cars in the border, using different colors. Being patterns rather than pictures, I would use fabric to cut them out, and then sew them into place. Once I did this, I experimented with using only 6 images, and making them larger. Here are designs #3 and #4:

The design still looked too "loud". I asked my sisters and a couple of friends what they thought, and most agreed. I would have to find a different pattern - or leave the cars off of the border.

The next step was to design the other side that was for sleeping rather than playing. I thought that using the car border rather than just a different material would look nice, but I may need to get rid of that idea, depending on what fabric I can find... For the sleep side of the quilt, I will use the same border as the play side, and will keep the background blue. However, I would like to use a picture of Chris' GT. Here is what I came up with:

I am not sure how to get the picture on the quilt yet, and I am also not sure about the car border or the design on the play side of the quilt. I will wait until tomorrow and see if my sisters have any additional comments to make - it should definitely help to have another pair of eyes looking at it!