Drop Everything And Make an Elmo Quilt!

Why settle for delayed gratification when you can see the finished quilt at the top of the blog? It took seven photos before I could get all three pug boys on the quilt, all looking in the right direction. From left to right: LarryPug, age 8, Elvis, age 15, and Caesar, age 4.

My friend Sandra who blogs at MMM Quilts hosts a monthly link-up for DREAMI (drop everything and make it) quilts. Here's my first DREAMI quilt.

This week is Thanksgiving and we will get to see Baby Nate. He is into all things Elmo right now. So I thought it would be great to make him an Elmo quilt. Of course, there is no Elmo fabric to be found, even after scouring the Internet except for a lonely panel, which I bought because it was better than no Elmo at all.

A close-up of the fabrics in Baby Nate's quilt. They're all flannel.

On Friday during our Cape retreat, we visited Tumbleweeds in Barnstable. We had also visited on Thursday, but serendipitously, on Friday we entered through the back door of the shop. Lo and behold, there were several bundles of Elmo flannel in the clearance rack, which I hadn't noticed the day before. I restrained myself from buying all the bundles and only bought one. Baby Nate doesn't need a king-size Elmo quilt.

Here is the top assembled on Nancy D's design wall.

The fabrics in the bundle were different sizes. Some were large squares and some were large rectangles. I was able to get eight large squares out of each print. I opted for simple and fast since Baby Nate will only be a baby for a short time.

Here is the finished quilt, sans pugs.

The quilt went together quickly. Originally it was set in diagonal rows, but I laid it out in the other room at our retreat. I sewed half of it, by chaining the pieces together, but they kept getting tangled. So I picked up the second half in rows and neglected to check my work. A design opportunity occurred...

I quilted it myself by simply crossing each square in an "X" and finished it with a wide satin binding because all babies love satin binding the best! There is solid red flannel on the back. It is fairly large, about 60 inches square. I started this quilt on a Friday and finished it the following Sunday. After the pug boys did their photo shoot, I threw the quilt in the wash and it is all soft and crinkly.

Linking up on Tuesday to Freemotion by the River. Thanks for visiting!

Pugs and kisses,

Nancy

Here is LarryPug to say, Have a great day!