Not your average baby quilt

So this post is for a quilt I made for my former college roomie Taylor, who is pretty close to popping out a baby last I heard. She is having a girl which is good, because truth be told, it is easier to make a girl quilt. This is because about half the fabrics out there are floral and it is hard to make floral not seem a bit girly. BUT, when I heard Taylor was having a baby and started thinking about a quilt I knew I didn't want to do something traditional baby-ish (if you know Taylor you would probably agree). By this I mean overly baby pink or princess-themed or something. To show an example of what I mean, I just now googled "ugly baby girl quilt," and this is my favorite result:

So you can see that I did not want to make something that would devour her child  while she slept.

Luckily, it seemed like Taylor and I were on the same page, because I asked her if she had any color preferences, and she said she is decorating the room with "Black/White, Gray, Red, Yellow and Turquoise/Teal." Definitely not your traditional baby girl colors. I took her quite literally and this is what I came up with:

I used all solids except for a few red pieces that have little white flowers - some vintage fabric I found in a bin somewhere (a bin of fabric for sale, not a trash bin). If you are familiar with kaleidoscope quilts (google it) you will notice that the design in the middle is made up of nine kaleidoscope blocks, I just chose specific colors to create the design. You can see my other kaleidoscope quilt that looks quite different. For the backing I found a perfect matching floral print. It had teal, red, white, and gray; really perfect.

I had a fun time coming up with the quilting design on this one. I like baby quilts for experimenting because they are smaller and more manageable on my machine. I decided to try to highlight the design in the middle by outlining it with closely spaced lines and I also made some diamond designs in the gray fabric. I do like the little star I did in the center.

Decent job hiding the ugly 80's apartment building in the background (my apartment building)

 All in all, I am very satisfied with the end result! It is fun experimenting with kaleidoscope quilts because I enjoy making them and they are pretty versatile in terms of the design.