This is part 2 of the Robots and Rockets quilt I made for Gabriel’s room.  I entered this in the Pacific Fabrics quilt show/contest at the Northgate Pacific Fabrics store. I know, lofty goals…first major quilt, and I entered it into a show already! But (and I know this is a completely shameless plug) from April 1 – April 20, if you’re in the Seattle area, stop by and vote for your favorite quilt!  Mine is #43.  I won’t blame you if you vote for another one; there are some pretty awesome quilts on display there!

Now, on to how I completed the quilt after getting the robot and rocket blocks pieced.

Completing the Quilt

Cut 5″ strips from robot fabric.  Cut to the width of each block (roughly 20″) horizontally, and to the length of each block vertically (if your robot fabric has a direction.  Otherwise, just cut to the width and length.)  You should have 15 strips for the horizontal borders, and 16 strips for the vertical borders.
Cut 16, 5″ squares for corners between blocks.

Sew one 5″ square to a robot fabric strip. Continue alternating square and robot until you have 4 squares attached to three strips (striped square – robot – striped square – robot – striped square – robot – striped square).
Sew the vertical strips to the blocks, until you have 4 rows of three blocks each, with vertical borders on each end of the strip (following the same pattern as above with the square and horizontal border pieces).
Sew the horizontal strips to the block rows.

You should end with four rows of three blocks each row with borders between the blocks and all the way around the quilt. (See the photos for clarification.)

To be honest, lining up the corners and border strips was the toughest part of this, since not all of the blocks ended up exactly square.  I had to get the blocks to be as close to the same size as possible, then trim the borders accordingly.  (I actually just sewed everything together, then realized I was WAY off on the horizontal borders, had to unpick the rows and try again.)

I used 108″ wide fabric for the backing and machine-quilted the entire quilt.  The striped fabric was also used for the binding.  The striped fabric looks really overpowering when seeing in a full yard cut of fabric, but it blended in beautifully with the robots and blocks!

Here’s the finished product!  I’m VERY happy with the result!

Top half of the finished quilt!

Close-up of one finished quilted rocket block.

Close-up of the quilting as seen from the back and the binding on one corner.

The backing works so well with the top of the quilt!