LMP+QG april challenge: peanut, the wee elephant

Each month, my friend Kait and I are making a project from the book, Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts ("LMP+QG" for short). You can see previous projects here. 

For this month's challenge, Kait and I made little elephants. While this project was a bit of a challenge for me (and some of the directions were a bit vague), I'm happy to report that Peanut turned out to be pretty darn cute.

For Peanut's body and ears, I used two fabrics from Heather Ross's latest line for Spoonflower, and I found a coordinating blue gingham in my stash for Peanut's blanket.

I especially love the little details, including the snout, felt eyes, and perle cotton tail.

See Kait's adorable elephant here.

Coming up next month: Summer Breeze quilt

the tempest quilt

Last year, while still living in Maryland, I made the drive up to Philadelphia to take a class with Cherri House at Spool (I've always been a big fan of Cherri's solids-only quilt patterns). For the class, we pieced together blocks for a quilt that Cherri designed: The Tempest.

The blocks sat around my studio until the top was pieced together early last summer, and then the top hung in my studio closet until a month or two ago when I finally, finally, sent it off to Joanne, my long-arm quilter.

I asked Joanne to quilt it with a cloud pattern, and I am so, so happy with the results. I backed the top with a vintage sheet-inspired print from Urban Chik's Dream On collection and bound the quilt with a blue and white stripe. This was the first stripy binding I've done, and it definitely won't be my last---I love how it looks!

Even though it took my a year to finish, I'm so happy to finally have this quilt on our bed!

gingham quilt

When Amanda Jean posted an in-progress shot of her gingham quilt back in 2010, I knew I had to make my own. Fast forward to last fall, to right before we moved into a new house, when I finally did. Using remnants from my stash (including scraps from our gray wedding day tablecloths), I made a mini version to hang above our bed.

I backed it with a cute Lizzy House print, hand quilted it using gray perle cotton, and bound it with a mini yellow gingham.

Though it's simple in design, and came together really quickly, it is one of my favorite quilts to date!