the panda quilts: #3: snickerdoodle quilt

another dear friend of mine is expecting her second baby (due sometime in the next couple of weeks), so i started planning/working on this quilt as soon as i finished holden's quilt.  since i had so much success with the 4 1/2" patchwork squares, i decided to do the same sort of thing for this one. i had fun picking out the fabrics, and my inspiration came from a few random sources: 

i saw this picture and immediately fell in love with the color palette (knitting pattern can be found here). i thought it would be a nice and unisex for the so-called "baby snickerdoodle", since mom & dad didn't find out the sex.  i promptly ordered a few kona solids that looked similar (seafoam, apricot, lake and medium gray).  i also wanted to include some fabrics from the adorable little apples line from aneela hoey; in particular, the little turtles. while visiting my friend over the summer in florence, al, she showed me all the turtles that stayed around their creek.  finally, i picked up a few miscellaneous fabrics at bolt fabric shop in portland, or. 

 this japanese one killed me - Megumi Sakakibara's doodles are so so cute.

with all the fabric in place, i cut out a bunch of 4 1/2" squares. at first, i thought i'd just do random placing like holden's quilt.  then, i had a vision: group the gray print with the gray solid, the blue print with the blue solid, and so forth. (this idea literally popped into my head while trying to fall asleep one night). i scrapped the seafoam green altogether.

 when i laid out the squares, i was so excited to see it shaping up. 

for the quilting, i followed the shape of the rectangles and spaced the lines accordingly. i used a disappearing pen to mark the lines so that they'd end up straight, and a tiny orange/white gingham for the binding.  after the baby arrives, i will let you know if it's a boy or a girl!