Originally Posted by yonnikka

I feel chatty. I'd like to tell why my fabrics for this Swap are not specifically"Juvenile" or 'Childrens' Prints.' When I look at the "childrens" designs, they tend to shout "BOY" or "GIRL" or sometimes "GIRLY-GIRL". Or, they may be more for infants such as rubber duckie, baby rattles, diaper pins, etc. For me, that means that they are too ultra-specific and not appropriate for a 5-year old. I believe that an I Spy quilt is, or can be, more of a Word-learning game, a Vocabulary building, and possibly a Spelling lesson, when words are incorporated into the design of your quilt. If I feed a child a strawberry, shouldn't it look like a real strawberry? Children are eager to learn new challenging things, not stereotypic kiddie stuff that they learned already two years previously... they are headed into a real world, which needs to be identified and dealt with, one bit at a time. For these reasons, I tend to put in recognizable items that are beautiful, rather than too childlike. I like things like seashells that can appeal to either boys or girls.