Elf Hats

I'm just a couple of days late to post this - I hope no one minds! These photos had to wait until after my sister's birthday - I didn't want to spoil her suprise.

My Friday finish for the week (well, last week actually) is a quilt I called Elf Hats. When I started it, I had this in mind:

But when I asked my 8-year-old son if he would lay the blocks out for me, he did this:

…and everyone that I showed it to liked it so much better. Here is the finished quilt, complete with green stripey binding.

My inspiration for the quilt came when I was playing blocks with my youngest son. He had stacked these two together and I immediately thought of a little elf with his hat on wonky.

I created my own template for the hat blocks, made one block and then decided to change the template to a paper piecing pattern – I hated dealing with all of the bias edges. The paper piecing goes quickly, and it gave me freedom to add a few variations. Here are some of my favorites:

A tiny elf hat for the smallest elf in the group:

A wrinkly elf hat for the little elf who doesn’t like to iron:

A tipsy hat for the elf who is always in a rush:

And two fancy hats for the elves that like to stand out in a crowd:

The finished quilt measures 68 x 80, and in this photo you can see the great green striped binding and the cute snowmen backing. (It’s from the Be Merry collection by Riley Blake.)

This project was one of my Joy in the New Year Challenge projects, so I get to cross it off my list! Two down, six to go!