Simple Gifts Baby Quilt (and tutorial!)

Last week I whipped up a quick and easy baby quilt for a friend of mine.  I used a tutorial that I wrote  a couple of years ago called the "Simple Gifts Baby Quilt tutorial".

I bought this stack at my local quilt shop - just 1-1/4 yard cheater panel for the quilt front and 1-1/4 yard of backing.  For the binding I needed 1/3 yard, and for the batting I had a leftover piece that was big enough - perfect!  

side note:  I LOVE using up those smaller, leftover pieces of batting, don't you?  I feel bad throwing them away, so I stack them next to my shelf and hope that I'll need it eventually!

Instead of spray basting the quilt and quilting on my Juki, I loaded it on my HandiQuilter and did some alternating squiggly lines:

You can see the quilting a bit better in this photo.  For each square I alternated the direction of the squiggly lines.  It was a fun alternative to a regular meandering quilting design! 

The quilt ended up measuring 38" x 42 and you can see in this photo what the cheater panel looks like.  I love the sweet little sea creatures!

[fabrics used for the quilt front and back are from the In The Ocean line designed by Lesley Grainger for Riley Blake]

This little quilt was a fast and fun project!  It's all wrapped up and ready for giving.  Hope she likes it!