Quilt Finish: Baby Blue Log-Cabin Quilt

This is my 6th baby quilt commission in less than 6 months. And you know what? Each time I am faced with designing and making a baby quilt, I go about it differently. Sometimes I go through my sketches, sometimes I look at old quilt books, and sometimes I look at quilts that I've recently liked on social media.
For this one I literally opened the curtain on the closet where I store my fabric and began going through my larger cuts of fabric...looking for potential pieces for a quilt backing. I fairly quickly settled on the low-volume pirate print (see below).

The person commissioning the quilt mentioned that the baby's room was blue. I looked in that section of my stash first, and my eyes fell on all the blue scraps and strings that were left over from my numerous recent blue quilts (see here, here,  and here). It didn't take long for me to decide on some blue log-cabin blocks. I toyed with the idea of using yellow or red center squares, but abandoned that idea and went with navy blue centers and accents of darker blues in the blocks.

I've been making my log-cabin blocks 12" square, and kept with that plan for this quilt.  I did 9 blocks total in a 3 x 3 layout.

I quilted straight lines roughly 1" apart for this project. I like how the straight lines don't compete with or overwhelm the scrappy blocks.

I had just enough of my penguin scraps to bind this guy (also bound this quilt with them).  These penguins backed my Magnolia Mystery Quilt, so I'll always have them there, but let me tell you: make sure you love every fabric that you use to back a quilt!  Why?  Because when you trim your quilt, you'll have a significant amount of scraps left over from trimming that backing.  Sometimes it feels like those scraps from backings go on and on forever.  I'll be a little sad to have them gone from my stash (both yardage and scraps), but it also feels good to have used them up.

This quilt finishes at 36" square and will make a nice floor mat or stroller quilt. I hope that it gets lots of use and love!