1) A yo-yo quilt
2) scrappy version of Grandmother's Flower Garden (super cute if the baby is a little girl, could be a nice item for her hope chest as a Queen sized quilt)
3) reversible quilt
4) an applique baby quilt for 1st b-day -- I just made one of these dimensional doll dress quilts for my niece (actually, I sized it down, cutting off the 4th row of dresses & all of the outermost pink-and-white borders) and added her name to the border in puffy letters. So cute you could just eat it up ... and she had tried her hardest to do just that! lol
McCall's pattern 6412
http://mccallpattern.mccall.com/m641...hp?page_id=909
You could do each of the floral yo-yo's in a different fabric and maybe add some more color to the outer borders or replace the outer borders entirely with a single piano key border). The only things I would suggest if you are doing this quilt pattern is (1) tack down the edges of all the yo-yo's if it's going to a baby because they will want to pull those things right off the quilt, and (2) who knows why McCall's has so many baby quilts that call for tiny buttons, but obviously that's insane. I got custom iron-on button stickers from
irononsticker.com (so cute, they have the little button holes punched out and everything -- unlimited colors. Just peel & press.
Other than that, it turned out super cute & requires quite a number of different fabrics. You could use some of the applique fabrics in the piano key border & add some more.
Final size of mine was 54"x42" (3 rows of dresses, inner border & an outer border that was 4" on top/bottom, 2" on sides). I think it would look slightly better with a 4" border all around if you're doing piano keys. You could definitely get all 52 fabrics in doing 2-3" width strips.
If it's a boy, I would suggest this "Little Monsters" pattern by Don't Look Now!
http://dontlooknow.bigcartel.com/pro...ittle-monsters. Just have to keep fabrics in the same color families so it doesn't get too crazy.