Some people are good with elephants. Rudyard Kipling tells the tale of Toomai of the Elephants in The Jungle Book – your children will love this story (in fact they’ll probably love the whole book, which you can read here). Or for a very moving real life example check out this link – Wild Elephants gather inexplicably, mourn death of “Elephant Whisperer”. I, on the other hand, have very little experience of real elephants although I was extremely privileged to make the acquaintance of a few about twenty years ago when a circus visited the fields opposite my parents house and they came every day to drink from the river.
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| http://img1.etsystatic.com/il_570xN.275656721.jpg |
Elephants printed on fabric, however, I always find challenging. I once bought a fat quarter bundle of Pernilla’s Journey by Tina Givens because I fell in love with this elephant fabric but my elephant FQs, disappointingly, yielded only two complete elephant images. I gave one to a quilting friend and the other and still languishes in my stash…
With Trade Winds (by Lily Ashbury for Moda) I held out more hope but I still only managed three elephants with decent borders per half yard. If you happen to want a quilt with elephants on, I strongly recommend you to buy yards and yards of them or you’ll just end up with a miscellany of disembodied feet, tails and trunks! I found it impossible to fussy cut to get elephants into the butterfly wings…
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| Trade Winds Quilt Centre |
So they just had to go into the borders!
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| Trade Winds Quilt border |
And I’m pleased to announce I have a Friday finish – not a complete quilt but a top at least. Hopefully when I’ve quilted it we’ll have a lovely sunny day and I’ll get some outside pictures of the whole thing.
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| Quilt top over bannisters view 1 |
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| Quilt top over bannisters view 2 |
Janine @ Rainbow Hare
RAINBOW HARE 
Patti
So disappointing about the elephant fabric, but you made perfect use of the ones you got! They look fantastic in the border!
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Carla
Your quilt looks lovely ; )
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Kelli
Love the colors, Janine! Can't wait to see it quilted. :)
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benta atSLIKstitches
Oh gosh, perfect colours. I hadn't noticed the symmetry of the butterflies' wings until today, fab!
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Lucy @ Charm About You
elephants or not it's still beautiful! I really love the colours.
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Annabella
A perfect use for your elephants and I eagerly await the ta-dah moment.
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Archie the wonder dog
It looks great and I love the elephants!
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moonlightsewing
You clearly need some smaller scale elephants! I have one with little (maybe 1.5 inch) elephant that I plan to use for a baby quilt. though, I adore the Valori Wells Karavan print with the elephant, which are quite large. Beautiful fabric, but as you noted, better not to cut it up too much!
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M-R
I love those fabrics, Janine! Great elephant placement!
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Catherine
It looks fabulous: I love the trade winds fabric. I am just finishing up my giant carpenters star out of this fabric
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Cindy Sharp
It looks great. There are some fabrics out with smaller elephants…check out Fabricworm.
I know what you mean about parts. Once made a stack n wack with a rodeo print and ended up with a bunch of stars featuring horses behinds. This was not what I had envisioned.
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Nat at Made in Home
Love the colours! And wonderful quilt!
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