I have another baby quilt to make! (Are we in the midst of a baby boom?) This quilt is for a baby girl. I showed Mom the stash of baby friendly fabrics I had and she thought one with cats on it was cute. But she is planning on decorating the nursery in light pink and grey. The cat fabric she liked is oranges, brown and soft greens. I didn't think I could translate this fabric into a pink and grey baby quilt.

Here is the group of fabrics I showed her.
They were fabrics I had in my stash that coordinated well together.

But I also had a yard of Andover Fabrics "Cat Dream" from Lizzie House's "Catnip" line. While the colors in this fabric are mainly melon to orange, the little flowers in the design are a soft pink. With some fussy cutting, I thought I could make this cat fabric work for my project.

I sat down with EQ 7 this morning to design a block for this baby quilt. I wanted to use the Economy Block (square in a square) in this quilt but I needed to add several fabrics to the block to push this fabric toward the pinks and greys. That meant the block needed to be fairly large. Here is my block design:

The block is 12.5 inches and will finish at 12 inches square. It is a foundation pattern.

Here is a mock up of the whole quilt using this block. The finished quilt will be 42 x 42 inches.

I like the zig-zag like pattern created by dark grey and the dark pink. I might add some rick-rack somewhere on the the borders to echo that pattern.

My next task was to test the block to see how it worked. To date, all of the quilts I have designed and posted on my blog have been Easy/Beginner level blocks. This one is an Complex/Advanced level block. The paper piecing is straight forward. But then the center Economy block is inset with mitered corners. It takes some partial seams to get the block constructed but it can be done!

Here is my first block.

Just 8 more to go!

I will post the pattern after I finish the quilt when I have all the details and can give some you some tips on the block construction. I can't wait to see how it looks when I have more blocks.