Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?

I am a very fortunate woman, very fortunate indeed. For, you see, I have a host of friends who a) put up with my frequent sewing chatter b) appreciate and inspire my creative experiments and c) present cloth offerings in abundance.

My dear friend, Sarah, is especially skilled in all of the the aforementioned. In some ways she and her husband Matt started my re-interest in sewing last year, when they announced that they were with child, and I embarked upon my first quilting project in many a-year. Now their adorable son is an adorable 8 months old, and no longer in need of the receiving blankets of his youth. For this reason Sarah passed 4 of them along to me to be used for re-purposing purposes.

The receiving blankets are so snuggly and soft compared to the quilting cottons I usually employ, and they quickly brought to mind the swatches of some cushy brown fleece I have left over from my nephew's baby quilt. I knew I wanted to use very basic patchwork square (3.5"x3.5") but I also knew that there had to be more to the quilt top than just a bunch of (barely meeting up squarely at the edges) squares. Then I remembered this elephant pattern from my favorite quilt book that might fit all my needs.


"Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?" was a completely cost free project. That is to say:
1. The receiving blankets came from Sarah.
2. The sheet I used as a stabilizer mysteriously appeared in our bedroom closet and neither Luke nor I know where it came from.
3. The brown fleece and green binding fabrics came from my box of scraps.
4. Etc.


One of Luke's ESL students will give birth within the next week or so, and their first daughter will receive this blanket made of receiving blankets. It's a bit unfortunate that my warmest and cuddliest quilt yet will be given in the dead of summer, but I'm sure it'll make a cute wall hanging if worst comes to worse.