My guild makes a ton of 36" quilts for the local hospital NICUs. Using the quick and easy D9P helps crank them out. We use just a single block (starting from nine 13" squares) for the entire quilt and they're cute as can be. If we need a little larger quilt, either 4 or 6 of the D9P blocks are easy to create a quilt of almost any size, just by adjusting the size of the starting 9-Patch. And for additional pizazz, when first assembling the 9-Patch we can add an interesting sashing between the squares to get an extra dollup of excitement!
If they don't want batting, how are the quilts...quilted?? Could a layer of flannel be acceptable?