Finished Jelly Roll Quilt

This post includes a lot of firsts for me:

1) This is my first finished quilt of 2012! (Shouldn't have taken me so long to get to my first quilt finish!)

2) This is the first quilt I've ever made with a jelly roll - in fact the first jelly roll I've ever purchased or used!

3) This is the first quilt I've ever machine quilted!

4) This is the first quilt I've ever started and finished in the same week!

Wow, it felt really good to write all of that! :) As a brief overview, I bought the jelly roll from JoAnn Fabrics on Monday evening. I put all of the 9 patch squares together that night. Tuesday night I sewed them all together and added the borders. Wednesday I didn't work on it at all. Thursday I sewed on the binding and hand-stitched it all to secure it to the back of the quilt. This might very well be my fastest finish ever.

I'm planning on giving this quilt to my sister for watching our cats while we're gone on vacation. She'll have to deal with their rambunctiousness for a little over 2 weeks and I know they're going to drive her crazy!

I used fusible batting inside, and I LOVED it! I did pin down around the edges, but I didn't have to spend a lot of time pinning everything together to be able to quilt the top. It almost seemed too easy...almost. I stitched a large diagonal pattern onto the quilt that makes it almost look a little like argyle.

My favorite part of the quilt is the binding. I used the leftover strips from the jelly roll, so it's all different colors. I think it makes the quilt very festive. All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with this little quilt, so I think I'm going to have to make one for myself sometime. I'll be linking this up to Crazy Mom Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict and AmyLouWho's Sew-n-tell so be sure to check out their other finishes of the week! Happy Crafting!