First quilt of 2009...

I made this quilt, called "Traffic Jam," for two dear friends of ours who are about to have a baby boy. The mom-to-be had her shower last Saturday, and the poor thing has definitely reached the "get this baby out of me!" stage. I was hoping that this quilt might brighten her day and help them feel ready for the new baby. This is my first "boy" quilt and I am very happy with the result. The quilt features a mid-tone solid grey, probably Kona, and pieced strips containing various primary colored prints, along with a few focal car prints. Some of the car prints are from purl soho and some are from pink chalk studio. As for the quilting, I quilted straight parallel lines in the grey "road" sections, and stipple quilted the patterned sections. My stippling is starting to improve, although I find that because I have to set my tension fairly high to keep the back looking neat, my thread often breaks while free motion quilting. This can be very frustrating, and often leads to a string of expletives on my part. Has anyone else experienced this? My machine has a scale from 0 to 9, and I have to keep it at about a 7 in order for the back not to look loopy. What do you keep your machine's tension on when free motion quilting? I bordered the quilt in a solid yellow, which I like, but do not love. It makes the quilt look a little less sophisticated that I wanted, maybe because the grey/yellow combo screams construction site. The back is pieced from a large piece of rocketship printed fabric from Purl, along with some other pieces from my stash. The white/red check is from Joelle Hoverson's Cake Rock Beach line.