WIPs Be Gone Finish

When I saw Lorna's Elephant Parade's first block, I knew I had to make a baby quilt using it since my God Daughter in Law[who was expecting a baby] is from Thailand, and the elephant is the symbol of the nation.  I got busy finding the right fabrics from my stash. Then I had to wait til I knew if it was going to be a girl or boy before I picked something for the little elephant.  Then I realized that the block made an African elephant

and the Thai elephant is an Asian elephant. Off to do research - the Asian elephant has smaller ears and the female doesn't have tusks.  So I redid the mother elephant block and waited some more. It wasn't til the end of March that we learned there was a good chance it would be a girl. So I remade the baby elephant block.  I put the basic top together.  Now how was I going to incorporate more about Thailand in this quilt?  Here's what I did:

1. There is a lot of vegetation and jungle in Thailand, so I took the 1/2 yard of fabric left from the border, lined the back with fusible interfacing and cut out leaves to extend the motifs into the quilt.

They were ironed on and machine appliqued using invisible thread, a 60/8 needle and Bottom Line thread in the bottom. This took a while.  And Baby Saige arrived while I was doing that step.  Then I decided to quilt a temple into the sky left of the elephant -there are lots of temples in Thailand.  So going back on the NET, found some ruins, made a copy, hung it on a window and traced it onto that golden paper for quilters.

 I then pinned it in place on the quilt and started outlining it.

Then I decided to do some letter work and found "welcome" in Thai and did a bit of stencil thread work to write that on the quilt.

I wanted to place the baby's name also, but there just wasn't room. Above is just part of it.  It didn't show up very well, but Waen spotted it right away.  With all the rain Thailand gets in a year, straight lines in the borders seemed just right. More quilting - quilted the mother elephant and surrounding sky using FMQ and a bit of ruler work on her ear.

Actually the blue foliage around the feet was the hardest. So here is my Elephant baby quilt gifted today to Saige M. Welcome little one.  I'm only 3 months late.

What are you up to?  I'd love to see your progress - quilty or otherwise.  Linky below - ends Monday, midnight.

An InLinkz Link-up

I'm linking to Amanda's Finish it Friday, Richards Link A Finish Friday, Sarah's Can I get a Whoop, Whoop?and Lizzie's Free Motion Mavericks.  Bye for now.
                                                                                          Angie in SoCal

Those leaves

Sarah of Sarah Did It asked, Did you create the shape or is that a pp.com pre-made shape?

Yes, I did create the shape, Sarah.  Here's how I did it:

Took a hexagon paper, folded it in half to make a half hexagon, and then cut a gentle curve from the lower left point to the topmost point. That's my template.  You can attach in two ways.  Sew to the sides of the hexagon flower as you would attach any hexagon, or leave those two bottom side seams flat and slip under your flower when you go to attach it to a background.  I sort of did the latter with my bullseye quilt, but they were raw edge applique leaves where I wanted to add some texture to my top.

Thanks for asking, Sarah.  Still haven't found that stabilizer.  Wonder what this was about? Scroll down to my last WIPs Be Gone post.  Blessings!

Applique Tuesday

I was going to machine applique some flowers to the blue background, but I realized I have to iron on stabilizer first. Wonder what I did with it.  ??  So I went ahead and finished the quilting on those two quilts:

Here I'm binding the elephant quilt.  I can't show it until it is gifted - maybe by Friday - we'll see. The other is a charity quilt and I'll show that Friday, too.

What are you working on?  Would love to see.  Leave me a comment and I'll come by.
Blessings!