After my holiday I decided I needed to reacquaint myself with Remy-my longarm before I quilted the elephant quilt. I found this top I started years ago and never finished and now can't remember what the plan was for it so decided to just quilt it up-it has finished at 35x52 inches and has a nice flannel backing so will keep a little child warm.
No matter where I tried to photograph this the true colours never showed-it is a lot more vibrant than it looks here.

Quilted with freeform leaves and circles-liked how it turned out.

Backing of left over pieces of flannel.

Then it was onto the elephant quilt that ended up giving me a lot of issues, but I do like the end result . I backed it with a red minkee dot-mistake number one but by the time I realized it would be an issue I had already ditch stitched and stitched around all the applique so I was not going to unpick all that.

It was at that point that a Webinair by Kim Brunner came up in my Facebook feed so I sat and watched it-well worth it. It was about loading and keeping a quilt square on your longarm and in it she said if using light fabric on the front that has a lot of negative space think carefully about a dark backing fabric as it will give a coloured tint to the front-So true but too late.

In the end the pink glow is not so much of an issue as the baby has now delivered and she is a healthy little girl (they did not know whether they were having a girl or a boy) .

The major issue I had was with the red minkee pulling through to the top, especially when I was using red bobbin thread and it wasn't a tension issue, so very frustrating and resulted in a lot of unpicking-in fact I think I spent longer unpicking than quilting!! Next I tried a grey bobbin-(I personally like my bobbin thread to blend with the backing, not necessarily matching the top thread.) and that just ended with more unpicking. Finally I gave in and loaded a white thread and although not perfect it is passable. I have since read on MQ Resource that a quilter had the same problem with orange minkee which she solved with two layers of batting-too late for me!! I think in the future I will stick to the lighter colours as I have never had a problem with them. I do however have a client quilt to do that she supplied a bright lime green minkee so I hope that one behaves.

I wonder how many more elephant quilts I have in my future. I love both the ones I have done so far and got a call from the recipient of the yellow and grey one to say how much she loved it and they were her favourite colours (did not know that when I made it). Wonderful to hear the quilt is being used.