Elephants and Holiday Hops

16Nov
by Janine @ Rainbow Hare

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.

 
Pernilla's Journey by tina Givens Bundle- Fat Quarters
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…

Trade Winds Quilt Centre

So they just had to go into the borders!

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.

Quilt top over bannisters view 1
Quilt top over bannisters view 2

Janine @ Rainbow Hare

 

 

12 thoughts on “Elephants and Holiday Hops”

  8. 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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  11. 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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