Mama Elephants - Done!

I am so impressed with myself!  :) I have finished the large elephant from the Elephant Parade Quilt Along from Sew Fresh Quilts. I am calling them the mama elephants.

I started with this:

Pieces for mama elephants picked out and waiting...

And ended up with this:

5 Mama elephants waiting for their babies

I am finding this to be a real learning experience. I have been really careful with cutting and piecing, and my blocks have come put pretty good. A few of things worth noting are,

1) When the instructions call for you to do something different than you normally do, say for example, pressing seams open instead of to the dark, pay extra attention to make sure you do. I had to go back and repress a few seams when I realized that I had pressed them incorrectly. As I got to putting together the sections of the block, I was glad that I went back and repressed.

2) If piecing multiple blocks at the same time, and there is a directional difference...PAY ATTENTION!!  As you can see above, all my mama elephants are facing the same direction. I realized that issue after I had pieced together the far left section of the block. I didn't want to pick everything out, so they will stay that way, but lesson learned.

All left facing trunks.Oops!

3) Finger pressing before using your iron can help prevent some burnt fingers. There were a couple of close calls, but no burns.

4) I am not a very fast piecer...And that is okay. It took me about 3 hours and 10 minutes to go from pieces sorted to finished block. That seems slow to me. Maybe it is not...I really don't have anything to compare it to.

Mama Elephant

Next up, the babies! Today, I am linking up with Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday and Sew Fresh Quilts for the Let's Bee Social Linky Party.

More to come,

Cutting, Cutting, Cutting...

Huge exciting night at my house last night! Maggie went down when we got home from book club and I went downstairs to finish cutting for the Elephant Parade blocks. I am behind on this quilt along, but persevering nonetheless. 

Last week, I tackled cutting up the off-white fabric I purchased from my LQS. It is a Northcott ColorWorks Premium Solid, but I'm not sure what colour number it is. Looking from the swatches on the website, it may be a 9000-11 or 9000-14. I'll find out the next time I'm there...if I remember to bring a swatch to match.

All done! Er...not quite.

Here's how I label...I think I need smaller stickies!

One HUGE mistake I made was not labelling the strips early enough. I started hacking cross-cutting my sashing strips into block pieces and got through 3 sashing strips before I realized it. OOPS! I have a little bit of off-white yardage left, so I think I'll cut new sashing strips and grab some more yardage if I need it. Would you buy and/or cut new strips? Or use the cut ones?

Needless to say, I was very careful when cutting the colour fabric last night. It took me about 3 hours to cut the remaining fabrics. Here is the result.

Can you see the blocks aching to be put together?

So glad that's done. Now I can get to putting blocks together, and perhaps get a little caught up to the quilt along. This week is week 3, which is an adorable frog. Check out the instructions at Sew Fresh Quilts. I'll post updates as I muddle my way through.

More to come,

Elephant Parade Quilt Along

Elephant Parade Quilt Along

When I was getting caught up on my Bloglovin' feed (it gets out of control so quickly!!), I came across this post on Sew Fresh Quilts. I love me some elephants, so when I saw her final design, I was swooning!  Here it is:

Elephant Parade by Sew Fresh Quilts

Isn't it adorable? I knew that I had to give it a shot.

I took the fabric list to my LQS and got to shoppin'. Here's what I decided on and purchased:

The original design calls for solids, but I decided to go with some subtle patterned fabric for everything except the sashing. The grey fabrics have some sparkle, as well.

As the quilt along is going onto its 3rd week (posts on Sundays), I am a little bit behind, but I am getting some sewing done when Maggie is sleeping, so hopefully I'll catch up at some point.

More to come,