I’ve entered a new phase—most of my friends are starting to have babies (and if they’re not having babies, they’re talking about it). This means that the baby blanket frenzy is about to begin! I’ve made several in the past, you’ve probably seen the Pink Lemonade Chevron blanket for sweet Eliana. And if you follow my Instagram it’s possible you’ve seen others as well. I imagine this space will begin to see more and more—which is exciting because I love making them!

And this July I got to go to a baby shower for two of my dearest friends!

There’s a current trend, or anti-trend maybe, of expectant parents not finding out the gender of their babies. For the most part, I don’t mind not knowing—I think it’s a beautiful surprise. Bu the part of me that has to buy fabric gets frustrated. To be clear, I’m never frustrated with the parents. No. The designers of nursery print material frustrate me. There are tons of options for gender-specific blankets, which is great, but when you’re looking for something gender-neutral it can be slim pickings.

Not only was it hard to find something gender-neutral that I liked, but the soon-to-be-daddy in this growing family has some particular ideas about current trends in baby fashion—he doesn’t like chevrons and he’s not a fan of green and grey. In case you didn’t know—chevrons don’t seem to be going anywhere and mint/grey is a very popular color combo right now.

I knew that they were decorating the nursery in greens, and they were also trying to go for a literature theme.

So I started at JoAnn’s. And I didn’t find anything that I loved. Nothing jumped out at me. My next stop was a newer quilt shop in town. I did find a collection there that had some green in it. And on top of that, it had fabric in it that incorporated words. (In case you’re interested, the collection is called “Mon Ami.”) So I picked up a charm pack and a few extra flat quarters. I chose the green fabric with words on it for the backing.

For this blanket you need 80 squares that are 5inx5in. (Obviously, if you use bigger squares you’ll get a bigger quilt.)

Basically what I did was make a bunch of flying geese—but I didn’t do it the traditional way. I cheated. I paired the squares up and then turned them into triangles. I sewed the new triangles into rectangles with bigger triangles in the middle. See the pictures below—it gets confusing to describe.

This is a crazy quilt, so I didn’t pay too much attention to what went with what. But I did try to make sure and have pairs of the background colors. Each block would consist of two flying geese with the same background color.

After I had the blocks assembled, I put them together trying not to put the same color side-by-side. I also alternated the direction of the arrows between up and to the right. I wasn’t about to accidentally make a chevron pattern!