I have the material below. My daughter is really into penguins and has been hinting for a quilt...well her 18th is on the 15th so I thought why not....I just can't decide how to put it together.

I have 2 shade of yellow; 2 shades of blue; white; black and grey to match the penguin material.

Any suggestions - remember I'm a newbie and the hard stuff hasn't been practiced yet....

I thought about squares on the diagonal but I've done so many squares recently it seems unimginative.

How about a pinwheel or a 9 patch or maybe a square in a square. Go to quilterscache.com for block ideas.

ok square in a square? new to me but I'm going to check out the website you recommended - be back in a few!

I like the carpenters wheel pattern - is it super hard to do?

I think where I am having trouble is the color layout.

how about a D9P? quick and easy and so much fun!

Gwyn - what is a D9P...see I just showed my newbie colors :)

Just saw a picture on here of what your talking about - that is pretty neat - so you just sew 9 squares together and then cut into 4?

I am working on my first d9p. Be sure to put your larger print in the corners so it doesn't get chopped up.
Put D9P in the search box above to see some great examples. I really don't recommend setting it on point for your first one - ask me how I know. Some of the threads have links to tutorials. That's always nice.

i would fussy cut the penguins into squares(as in be mindfull of where you are cutting so the squares have actual penguins in them rather than peices of penguin) then i would do an alternating square in either a four or nine patch, squares made of four different coloured triangles or sew rows of three colours to equal the width of your penguin squares, like this http://www.google.ca/images?hl=en&q=...w=1003&bih=540 which is fairly easy to do. you can make the squares slightly bigger than normal to make the quilt easier. well, that's what i do. i 'cheat' by making my squares 8" instead of say 5". makes putting it together and cutting alot faster and easier plus it works better i think if your fabric print is large.

do a quick bit of research. there are alot of shortcut ways to make the different squares fast and easy.
i am also working on my first d9p quilt and am pleased with how quickly it is coming together. i started with 6 1/2" squares. took 2nights to do the 9 patches and cut them apart, one night to arange half the blocks and sew them all together and i'm assuming one more night to do the rest. assuming i can work uninterupted. good luck. penguins are so cute! post a pic when you get it done

The penguins look to be kind of big so you might want to hunt for a pattern using a big block to be able to see the penguins. I have seen several patterns on-line for big block quilts or to use fabrics you hate to cut into! I will check on-line to see what I can find and let you know.

If you go to search and put in Big Block Beauty at The Quilt Pattern Shoppe you can download the pattern. It looks pretty simple and might make good use of the penguin fabric.

keep the birds seeable use them fussy cut as the 4 corners of the 9 patch[[then they will stay when you cut in the +]

I did a warm wishes for my grandson out of penguin fabric. It is posted on this board. It works and goes quickly.

I don't know. I haven't tried it.

I'm wondering about the fabric, it doesn't look like cotton to me. More like fleece. That would make a difference for me to decide what pattern I would use, because of the stretch.

But it is beautiful.

Warm wishes is a good pattern to use. You can have a 6 or 7 inch square of your focus fabric.

Lovingmama:

It is flannel....someone else asked how big the penguins were - each one is only about 1.5 inches tall - I couldn't decide today so I ended up spending the day working on making a tube quilt!