Judy's Elephants

My sister gave me a box of fabric to use a while ago, and I finally have used something out of it. I started with a yard of elephant fabric from the box, added a yard of black and a yard of white from my stash (conveniently, they were already 1-yard pieces!) and came up with a design to use them. I purchased the red, since I like to have unified borders, binding, and backing and I didn't have anything big enough to use. I ended up making two lap quilts which will go to Project Linus once they're finished. This was also a neat chance to play a bit and see what effects things had - black or white for the middle border, black or white on the outer 9-patch blocks. DH dubbed them "Judy" and "Judy's Evil Twin."

I did have a horrid time with the red centers to the 9-patch blocks: I'm so used to doing a two-color 9-patch, that I kept sewing white-black-white strips for the middle row, which weren't what I needed. I think I had to frog three strips - at least I only had to take one white strip off, then add a black to the other side, and I could use it for the other rows.

There are two reasons these are named for Judy: first, my son Lucas has a little stuffed elephant from the Indy Zoo that came with the name Judy, and he adores her (she was even present when his younger sister was baptized!) Second, I worked this quilt instead of adding my comments and support to Judy's blog, right around the time she was getting some rude comments about her desire to raise chickens. Somehow, a line came up about a city ordinance which prohibited, among other things, raising elephants in your yard. I decided that instead of telling the mean people to go away, I'd go quilt instead and make something for a child who might need to know there are nice people in this world. So without saying which is which (cuz honestly, I don't care), each Judy is the namesake for one quilt!