Steve's Camo Fleece Quilt

My husband, Steve, is active duty US Air Force, and his job requires that he travels a lot to many locations, including the middle east. I wanted to make him a blanket for him to take with him to colder locales, so I decided on a two layer fleece quilt. One side is patchwork with camo and green alternating squares, and the other side is solid. I sewed the patchwork onto the solid fleece, and left several inches along the border of the solid piece to make fringe. I made it longer than a normal blanket of that style at his request. I also embroidered our last name and USAF on two of the corners. It was a learning process for sure. I made a few mistakes (that I was able to correct), and learned some techniques for the next blanket which will help make things go more smoothly...I hope!

Step by step:
1. Cut out 9" squares from felt (8" square, plus a 1/2" seam allowance). For this blanket, I used camo and green, 30 squares of each.
2. I pieced it together block by block into rows, sewing each block together right sides facing each other.
3. I then finger pressed the seam open and sewed another line (straight stitch) on either side to secure/flatten the under seam.
4. Once I had all the individual rows done, I sewed them together in the same fashion, creating a nice stitch effect, which could easily be emphasized with contrast stitching.
5. With the patchwork side completed, I laid out the solid piece, centered the patchwork on it, and trimmed off the excess on the end.
6. Next, the embroidery was completed on my machine.
7. This was the most tedious step of all for me, and took way too long (or at least it seemed to). I laid out the solid piece wrong side up and centered the patchwork on top of it, securing it in place with a few well placed safety pins. Using a measuring tape and yard stick to provide both accurate measurement and asthetically even edges, I folded the patchwork under approximately 1/4" to 1/2", depending on how stretched out each block was and how the seams lined up when folded. Using straight pins, I secured the patchwork edge to the solid piece all the way around, making sure that the pins were facing in a direction that would be easy to remove when sewing.
8. Using a straight stitch, I went along each edge several times (once along the very edge to secure it, once along the edge of the under seam, and once in between these two stitch lines). This created a look similar to that of the rest of the patchwork stitching.
9. Once the patchwork was secured, I trimmed the edges so they were all an even length and cut into 1" wide fringe.