A Girl and Her Japanese Quilt

Last week we went in for an ultrasound and found out that we are having a healthy baby girl! This will be girl #5 for us. My husband is hopelessly outnumbered with all his little girls, wife, 6 hens and a female cat. Poor guy. ;)

But now that we know that it is a girl, I can officially start sewing baby things! The only problem is that I am not in the mood for sewing with a bunch of pink. I want to use all the special fabric that I have been saving. Great idea, huh? Only it happens to be gender neutral/boyish. Oh well, people never seem to pick up on gender clues anyway. I don't know how many times I have taken my baby girls out all dressed in pink and someone congratulates me on my baby boy. ?!?

Anyway...here is baby quilt #1. I made it with about half of the 5 inch Japanese Charms I received in two swaps last year. It is made out of 4 super-sized granny square blocks. It was relatively fast and easy to piece. The slowest/funnest part was laying out the squares and rearranging them until I was pleased with the layout.

The blue block. I love the frogs, fruit and owls!

The red block. I tried a lot of different fabrics and placements for this block. I ended up cutting some of my own Japanese fabric to have enough red to make the outer round. I think the fabric placement/contrast worked out well.

The green block. This block layout came together fast, except for the pesky center square. I'm still not sold on it, but it was the best looking option. I am loving the Echino cars and blue Scandinavian inspired prints.

The pink block. At first pink was going to be the outer round in this block, but it just didn't play well with the other block colors. I like the final layout and the pop of brown in the center. The pig and reindeer fabric are too cute for words.