Shockwave Squares Scrappy Baby Quilt

Gender-neutral, and "for boys" quilts as well, can really be a challenge for me. I have no problem using the whole gamut of colors for girls, so my stash is all over the place, but I tend to like floral prints too much for all of those same fabrics to also work for boys.


This quilt was born from a stack of fabric that grew from leftovers of my Boats Baby Quilt, since I loved its color scheme so much. It is intentionally non-floral, although sometimes I couldn't resist.  Some of my favorite scraps appear!

When I saw Cluck Cluck Sew's Chippewa Scrap quilt on Pinterest, I broke out the graph paper and mocked up a version. Only after I finished the quilt did I realize that wasn't necessary, since she has a lovely clear tutorial posted, too! While it is fun to figure out how to make something, why replicate effort and work? I wish I'd seen it earlier :)

I wound up using large half-square triangles to make up the background which differs from her tutorial, but the result is really similar and all design credit is hers.

I chose an older Lotta Jansdotter print for the back (successfully avoiding flowers!), and a sweet retro Jennifer Paganelli fabric for the binding.  The binding, in particular, was one of those colors I never seemed to be able to match in a lot of my previous quilts, so I was happy to find that this quilt provided just the right use for it.  

This baby quilt measures roughly 42" square, and I quilted it in straight, evenly-spaced lines, using the seams of the design to guide placement. For the white background areas (which didn't have seams to guide me), it was then pretty simple to extend those lines with a long ruler and a fabric marker.

I'm looking forward to continuing making "OK for boys" quilts, too! Like the Flying Geese baby quilt I made a while ago, the challenge helps me find a few new fabrics in dots or stripes-- so glad that my LQS will sell me just a few inches when I need to fill out my scraps!