Almost-a-quilt baby blanket

I recently finished making my first almost-a-quilt baby blanket. Since there isn't any insulation between the layers, I think it's technically a coverlet. It does have a quilt top and binding though with one of those fuzzy, crazy soft baby materials on the back side.

Before I started my husband suggested I make a template so I could easily figure out how many pieces I needed to cut in each size and color, and how I wanted to arrange them. I'm glad I actually listened to his advice this time because making the template on my computer took much longer that I had initially imagined it would. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be to fit my pieces into my finished blanket size.

After I placed all of my pieces in my template I filled them in with similar colors so that I could decide where I wanted to place my fabric pieces. There were so many brown pieces that I left them white in my template; I didn't want to waste a lot of ink when I printed my template. Then when I cut out my fabric pieces I just checked them off on my printed template so I didn't cut too many or too few pieces of each fabric.

I just made this template using Microsoft Word. All my squares/rectangles were 1/10 scale. For example, I wanted to use 8" fabric squares so I made my template squares 0.8". Then, all I had to do was count how many brown 8" squares I had in my template and then cut out the same number from my fabric.

I used 8" squares, 6" squares, and rectangles that measured 8" x 4" and 6" x 3".

All the planning paid off though because this was one of a very few projects that was completed without a hitch. "Measure twice, cut once," indeed. Here's the finished product, full of love and cuddly warmth for my little guy to enjoy this winter, or whenever he needs some extra comfort.