"I spy" Quilt

I saw this idea for an "I spy" quilt on Make and Take's blog and knew that I wanted to copy it.
I completed one for my niece in Missouri who just turned one, (a belated present) and I'm going to make 2 more for my baby girl and my nephew. All three of them were born within 6 weeks of each other! I'm making them small so that they are good travel blankets/ travel games, and I have a better shot at actually completing all 3 blankets if they are this small!

I bought a bunch of different fabrics: cows, chickens, fish, clouds, flowers, trains, butterflies, watermelon, strawberries, ect. I only bought 6 inch strips of each fabric, so it was pretty cheap. I washed all of them and ended up with a gigantic pile of wrinkled fabric strips. Might have helped if I didn't leave them in the drier for 3 days.

I ironed all those strips. Whew... that looks much better. Doesn't that stack of fabric look so nice and organized?

I made this "stencil" with a 5 inch square inset. I used it on about half of the fabrics to center the main object, as you can see with the butterfly. Then I cut them out by hand. With some of the fabric, like the dog print above, I used my rotary cutter to make quick 5"x5" squares. That's the easier way to do it....

Then I sewed, sewed, sewed away until I had all the little squares put together. I put a yellow fleece fabric for the backing, and a green silky border.

Here it is one more time...What do you think?


Here's a picture of the birthday day girl checking out her present.