Time for Blogger's Quilt Festival!

Amy's doing it again - providing us with a wonderful online QUILT FESTIVAL with hundreds of quilts being shared by You.  I so look forward to seeing your entries.  Here's mine in the small quilt category:

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.

I was happy with my adapted version of Lorna's elephant quilt. It measured 37" square. And I was only three months late getting it to baby Saige. In case you want to vote for it in the Viewer's Choice competition, you can find it here for nominating now or voting next week.

Have you entered a quilt?  I hope so - off to see your creation there.  Thanks again, Amy, for bringing the show to us!

WIPs Be Gone Week 43 and a Winner

Our winner of last week's giveaway is Quiltsmiles who lives in NY.  Congrats.  I'll send you your papers as soon as I hear from you.

The Duarte family is now the Portland, OR family - they got there yesterday early afternoon after a two and a half day journey north.  Here they are the night before they headed out - the four right of center (ps - Lily is standing on a block so she wouldn't look so small):

I miss them already! It will be  a long while before I get use to this.  Now I have two adult children far away.

After roaming the house feeling lost for two days, today I finally got my quilting urge back and began working on a WIP.  WIP #5 to be exact.

I can see right away I'm going to have to get myself a bigger design wall - here is just some parts of the center and it's already bigger than my puny DW.  I started this WIP in 2011. The pattern is from Fons and Porter published in 2003.  It has 12 blocks - mine has only 4 as I have no place for such a large quilt. Those blocks are 14" finished.  My plan was to try different applique methods with each block and see how I liked them.  I can tell you that I like needle turn applique best, but I'm too slow at it. My next favorite method is Esther Aliu's one.  She has a great tutorial on her blog.  Give it a look see.

Okay, what are you up to?  Whatever it is I'd love to see it.  Linky below and it ends next Wednesday, midnight.  I'm linking to the parties on my sidebar and also Amanda's as I did finish machine appliqueing the fourth Jubilee block yesterday.

An InLinkz Link-up

Some of This, Some of That Week 43

Coming off the wall - again I just assembled the blocks.

 This VA lap quilt has gone to another guild member to be quilted.  And back on my design wall:

made a few more brown/pink chunkies and added a center. Now to come up with an outer border.

Linking to parties on sidebar.  Visit them for inspiration.  Oh,  and I've used another 1/2 yd so my new YTD total is 90.70 yards  de-stashed.  Bye for now - have to go catch up on all that was on hold while I saw off my son and family to Oregon.  They should be in Portland today - end of travels for now. Yeah.