A Tale of Three Elephants

Have you ever made an Elephant?

I have! The three admins (me, Cathy and Sandra) at the Fun With Free Motion Quilting group on Facebook decided to do a quick, fun project together to brighten the cold winter days. Sandra selected the Elephant & I pattern by Jennifer Sampou.

This is paper piecing pattern and none of us have more than a slight acquaintance with paper piecing, so this made the project a bit of a challenge for us. We used regular printer paper and did not purchase any specialty piecing papers. All our materials used were fabric and supplies from stash.

Jennifer has three videos supporting this pattern on YouTube to help you pick fabrics, learn the paper piecing system, and affixing your elephant to your background. The quilt can be either a pillow or a large lap quilt and comes with all the drawings for piecing your elephant and either a boy and a girl (the pattern photo has the girl). I highly recommend watching her videos if you are going to make this pattern.

We were all surprised how quickly the elephant was pieced! You can do all the piecing in a day with time left over. And for the three of us, with little paper piecing experience, it was a very nice surprise.

Sandra decided to do a large floor pillow for her grand daughter (36″ square) with her elephant and she used the girl template as well. Her background is a Moda metallic grunge in cream. The quilting is Sandra’s “bubbles” design.

Cathy’s elephant “Spice” is composed of bright batik scraps with a batik background. A monkey joined them on their stroll.

Esmerelda is my creation, and she is joined is on her walk under a big yellow sun with some bird friends. I guess I should have used some brighter thread on this one! It looks fine in person, but the colors really don’t show well in the photo. Quilt is 48 x 72″ with bamboo batting and a pieced back.

A variegated blue/gray/white is use for make echoing swirls for the “sky” background. The bright yellow sun in the left hand top corner is a feather wreath with big rays trailing into the sky. the right side with the color blocks is quilted in paisley feathers. That is a pastel thread and difficult to see. Esmerelda is walking on “grass” created in a variegated green using Sandra’s “Wildflower” design (also available on YouTube.) First time doing the paisley feather and the wildflowers.

Happy quilting all!

Lennea