Fishy Friends Quilt - Used My Cricut

Here it is all finished! My second quilt kit from Quilts For Kids.

My First one is HERE.

You can kinda see the quilting stitches on the front of the quilt... see the waves along the border?

What a cute little Crab!! He's definitely my favorite!

Okay, here comes TONS of Photos :-)

Here's the little sew on label they send with the kit for you to sign it and name your quilt.

I guess it's kinda like a little tracking device too, or it can be if the child who gets your quilt goes online and tells the story of how they got it and how they felt, then you can see who it went to because your name's on there, but online it's mostly just quilters who tell their story of making it.  Whew! That was a run-on sentence if I've ever seen one!

I'm not sure how often this actually happens, Downy's website has TONS of stories written by Quilters and Receivers of Quilts. But do they ever find the other person who made/received the quilt??    I don't know.

Here's a close up... I was really glad that everything worked out right so the waves were perfectly on the edges...

Okay, so now your wondering exactly what this quilt has to do with the Cricut right?!  It's gotta be the cutest way to make a template EVER!

These Cute Little Guys are from the Life Is A Beach cartridge. I just love the fishy kiss lips and is it just me or does that little one look kinda evil?

Crabs and Waves are from the same cartridge.

There might be an easier way to do this, but I was having a difficult time outlining the fish when it was just cut out of cardstock- they kept moving around on me!  So I used Freezer Paper and ironed it on there to trace around.

I'm using one of those purple disappearing ink fabric markers, one problem.... It kept disappearing TOO FAST!!! I had to re-trace those suckers like 3 times before I was done stitching!

I lifted up his little mouth flap so I could get the smile line drawn on there.

Here's that creepy evil fish again.  Can you see in the background the puffy fish that's already sewn?  First I planned out where I wanted each one to go, but I ironed them on and traced them one at a time, then I just filled in the spaces with bubbles.

I had to go out and buy this nifty presser foot, called a darning and embroidery foot, from a local sewing machine store.  The photos actually make my quilting stitches look pretty good, but this baby has a lot of imperfections... I guess that just gives it character! 

Other than a sample block to practice on, this was my first go with free-motion machine quilting.  I am way happy with the way it turned out regardless, and I'm sure it will make some little kid out there who's suffering happier for having it.  Okay here's the finished product again...

In case you were wondering, which you probably weren't, Yup, I'm already almost finished with the next one. It isn't a kit from them (Quilt For Kids), I just bought some fabric to make another one that I will hopefully have finished this weekend so I can send them back together.  I LOVE making things for other people, mostly I just love making crafty things, but I have no need for a baby quilt around here so it's nice to have an excuse to sew... :-)  
(Let's not think about all those OTHER sewing projects I have half-finished lying around here! I'm having too much fun with this!)