Baby Elephant Almost Done

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Winter arrived here last night. We got 6 or so inches of snow overnight. The snow has been light today, but another wave is supposed to come in tomorrow lasting through to the weekend. Unfortunately I'm still using my summer tires, but the winter tires get put on next Tuesday. I'll drive really carefully until then! 

I had a really eventful day last Monday after making my blog post. First, Grace came running in the house with her paw bleeding. She had broken another toenail. I immediately packed her up and took her to the emergency vet to get it fixed. I do keep her toenails clipped, getting them done once a month at daycare, but she runs around like crazy in the rocky backyard so I think we'll be dealing with this quite often! This time was worse than last time and she had to have all of the remaining toenail pulled out so only the quick was left. The poor girl has been on exercise restrictions and wearing a cone for a week now and has another week to go! While we were at the emergency vet, I got a text that my nephew and his wife had their baby. The doctors had decided to induce on Friday and she hadn't gotten far enough along all weekend, so the decided to do a C-section on Monday. Baby and mom are doing great and they all went home on Thursday! She's a very beautiful baby!

I was able to almost finish my Baby Elephant quilt. This quilt is from Lickety-Split Quilts for Little Ones by Laura Bevin. I have all of the quilting finished except for the triangles representing the eye and the ear:

Baby Elephant - Front

This will be quick to finish once I figure out what to quilt in those spots, but I wanted to get this blog post out first. For the eye, I was at first thinking about some kind of circle or spiral design, but when I drew that out on paper it gave me an elephant on drugs vibe. But I think a spiral in an almond shape might work. For the ear triangles I'm thinking of repeated squiggles in a "3" shape or something like that. These are very small areas so they aren't really important, but they need something in them or the fabric in those spots will wear more quickly than the rest of the quilt. When quilting, I love to use threads that make the quilting appear on the back of the quilt:

Baby Elephant - Back

It's subtle, but you can see the details of the elephant. In the elephant body, I used Angela Walters' flower meander quilting to go along with the roses that I quilted in the cornerstones:

Baby Elephant - Flower Meander Quilting on Front

Baby Elephant - Flower Meander Quilting on Back

My flower meander is definitely not as pretty and smooth as Angela's, but it really is effective in real life. For the background areas I used stippling, like I did for the background in the cornerstones:

Baby Elephant - Background Quilting on Front

Baby Elephant - Background Quilting on Back

Finally, I did some straight-line quilting in the toes. This matches the straight-line quilting in the border and give a toenail vibe to me:

Baby Elephant - Toe Quilting on Front

Baby Elephant - Toe Quilting on Back

While I marked the straight-line quilting for the border and used the walking foot, I used a ruler for the quilting in the toes. This was a nice small space where I could get back into the swing of using rulers. I'll finish up the quilting on this quilt this week and add a label, but I won't bother posting it again since that quilting is so minor. This will be.a Christmas gift for the baby so it's actually finished in plenty of time! Now I have to work on the quilt for my brother-in-law for Christmas. I'll hopefully have something to show on that one next week!

To practice the flower meandering stitch, I started making a Project Bags 2.0 designed by ByAnnie. Most of her bags require some quilted fabric, so they are good places to practice your quilting!

Quilted Fabric for Project Bag

Close Up of Project Bag Quilting

I chose this fabric to go with a zipper I bought that is dark navy (looks black) with shiny neon pink teeth and pull. I think this is going to be a really fun bag! I'll work on this bag when I need a break from other things I'm doing.

I also started crocheting a new scarf that will be a good travel and TV project. It's the Olney St. Scarf designed by Betsey Sennott:

Olney St. Scarf

Olney St. Scarf - Close Up

This yarn is really splitty so is hard to use, but, luckily, this stitch pattern is easy so the yarn isn't slowing me down too much. I really love the color of this yarn! It's a little bit darker than it appears in the close-up image. It's nice to have some more crochet going!

Finally, I have a new, interesting bag to share. I'm in Laura Nelkin's N Club, which is an annual club where you get a larger knitting project three times a year and there is always a fun knitting or crafty item included with the kit. Our last project for this year included a cool bag that you make from a leather handle and a large square of fabric:

New Bag - Side View

New Bag - Front View

New Bag - Handle View

The bag is based on the Japanese tradition of folding and knotting fabric to make things. In this configuration, I knotted two corners of the cloth square. Then I wound the other two corners of the cloth square into the slots on the handle as instructed in the handle packaging. It's a really cool concept and seems very sturdy.

Nancy