Cut, cut and cut some more

For a while now, I have been promising Emma that the next quilt I finish will be hers. And this is the thing - its a one patch, all squares quilt, so it shouldn't be complicated. So of course I had to make it more difficult by deciding to make a scrappy plus quilt with the blocks, using different prints in the same colour group to make the plus-es

See, doesn't it look pretty? The problem is, when I get to making a quilt that is 12 blocks by 15 blocks, it gets a little more difficult to get the cross pattern to appear. Especially since I have all these great i-spy fabrics I want to include, and a lot of them are busy, small or medium scale prints. So I end up with something like the mess below when I fit all the fun prints in that I want to include.

After shuffling fabrics around for 2 hours in the middle of the night (while Amy, Rory and the Doctor ran away from things in the background), I realized that I had too many busy prints, and so the quilt ended up looking like a bit of a mess. Due to toddlers and cats, I can't leave my design wall out anymore, so you will have to excuse the middle of the night photo. The purple and pink blocks were looking the best, because I had all these pink and purple blender prints. So, I decided to pull a bunch more almost-solids and solids to add to the quilt:

The funny thing about this quilt is because there are so many prints, I have spent hours cutting squares. HOURS. And now I have to cut some more.

At least I'll be able to whip up baby girl quilts in a jiffy for the next 4 or 5 years . . .