Stumped. Ideas?

I admit, I'm more than a little stumped here. I've promised to make a kid quilt for someone (long story why I'm being fuzzy on details, but it is intentional) and I've got a set of fabrics to work with, but oh am I unsure of what to do. Care to meet the players?

Most of the light-colored prints were what I expected to get, with a bonus of cute frogs

Blog entry: domesticat.net/quilts/snipsThe lights and brights

['The lights and brights']

The dark fabrics contributed were mostly plaids.

Blog entry: domesticat.net/quilts/snipsThings that go 'plaid' in the night

['Things that go "plaid" in the night']

This print is huuuuge. It's also topical. But HUGE. (help?)

Blog entry: domesticat.net/quilts/snipsThe spanner in the works

['The spanner in the works']

Ideally, I'd want to use some of all of the fabric contributed, but I'm at a loss. I love them each individually but I am struggling to love them as a unit. What in the world do I do to turn these wildly disparate pieces into a cohesive scrap quilt?

I've considered a ribbon star or friendship star quilt, like this photo from flickr user qusic:

The requested image size is not available for this photo on Flickr (uploaded when this size was not offered yet). Try another size or re-upload this photo on Flickr.
['Friendship star framed 4'] (Creative Commons licensed)

I could use fairly large swaths of each fabric, but occasionally I could cut strangely and make those secondary squares out of single pieces of fabric -- that might work well for the ginormous kid print that I shouldn't slice apart. It's not perfect, but it could indeed work.

I keep hoping there's a better option, but I just haven't found it yet. I could do simple squares, even. I keep telling myself that simple isn't necessarily cheating...

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Comments

The quilt doesn't have to be symmetrical or uniform - you could very easily pick a general pattern for the rest of the pieces and then use the kid print as a big block that takes up space equivalent to two (or more) pieces of the rest of the pattern.  I think it would look kind of cool, actually, to have two or three "kids playing" over a more or less unrelated design . . .

Yep - I was seriously considering the idea of a design that would allow me to interrupt it periodically with those bigger prints.

I like Wendy's idea.

I like big blocky patterns especially for kids. Triangles make me hurt for some reason. I'm sure it's a sign of some deep mental illness; maybe not even all that deep.


I guess I would cut down on the number of fabrics I would use from this selection, too, but that's probably because I'm a beginning quilter and I don't see how they'd all work together.


Look forward to seeing it finished, whatever you do.