Elephant Parade is Finished!

My large quilt guild, Pride of the Prairie, issued a challenge for the upcoming quilt show.  It is a paint chip challenge.  I posted all the info about the challenge on this post. The challenge was issued at the January 2017 meeting.  I got started right away.  This is only the 2nd time I've done one of the challenges for the quilt show.  Most of the entries are 'art' quilts, and that is way out of my realm of comfort.  I'm pretty traditional, not artsy. 

I figured that just using 3 colors from paint chips was something that I might be able to do.  Off to Home Depot I went, and collected tons of paint chips with colors that started with either a C, H, or E (the first three letters of my first name). 

I narrowed the chips down to just 3, and got started.  Once I'd seen the name 'Elephant Gray', I knew what I wanted to do (no, I didn't use that paint chip, since I couldn't find a gray fabric that matched the paint chip).  More info on my next moves are on this post and this post (mainly about the tail). 

After those posts, I put the elephant aside, since I had several things that had 'due dates' long before the elephant challenge quilt.  Then, I found out that I would be a first time Grandma, and, of course the elephant was put aside for the Peter Pan quilt. The Peter Pan quilt took me from August thru December to complete.  Poor elephant, no time to work on it.

Last week, I finally pulled the elephant quilt back out, and got started on finishing it.  In the last 24 hours, I've attached the tail and stitched button leaves to the tree. 

leaf buttons on the tree

A friend thought I should add embroidery to the little elephants for mouths and eyes.  After playing around with a drawing, to see how the mouth should go, and where the eye should go, I decided to add ears to the little elephants instead.

ears on the little elephants

 The ears look much better in person, than in my bad photos. 

Here is the finished elephant quilt.

Elephant Parade, finished

I have decided that this quilt is DONE!  I really like this elephant quilt.  I've done sew many things that I'd not tried before. 

The challenge says that the quilt can't be smaller than 24" or larger than 45".  My elephant measures 31.25" long and 43.75" wide. 

We also have to use at least one handwork method on the quilt (binding doesn't count), and I hand appliqued both little elephants, hand stitched on their ears, hand stitched the buttons on the tree, and braided the tail and attached that, too. 

If you are in the Chicago area, I invite you to come see my quilt(s) and vintage machines at the show.

Pride of the Prairie Quilt Show

March 10 & 11, 2018

Richland Grade School

1919 Caton Farm Road

Crest Hill, IL 60403