Mary's elephant quilt

Yesturday I had some running around to do.  I had to go to the bank to get some US cash for my mom who will be traveling to the states.  That ought to be nice to get away for a little while.  Wishing her a fun and safe trip.  I also headed down to Milton to pick up a Laura Berry print that I bought at an antique dealer in Aberfoyle a couple of weekends ago.  I had the print reframed to suit the print better.  I am not much into plain oak.  

Later I went to the Milton Fall Fair.  A few of my customers won prizes in the fair and I wanted to go check it out.  I'll share those photos in another post.  Come to think of it, I still haven't shared the photos of the Acton Fall Fair either.  Later...  After the fair, I headed over to one of my customers to deliver her quilt, since I was in the area.  She loved it.  Lastly for Milton, I had to do a return and finally purchased a hand railing with hardware to install at the bottom of the stairs that change direction, going down to my quilting area.

By the time I got home is was 2pm, so I still had time to do some gardening.  I really have to get my pots in the ground, otherwise the plants will not survive much longer.  But in order to do this, I had to finish removing the two large roots of a stump we took out, remove five plants from where they were in the middle of my soon to be path, and relocate them elsewhere in the garden.  After this, I was able to move the three large rocks I had to border the path and garden area and remove all the excess dirt to smooth out the path.  This took me to about 5:30pm.  I had to stop there as it started to rain a bit.  I cleaned up the mess I made and heading in.

I wasn't upset that it started to rain.  I wouldn't have physically been able to do much more anyways.  Those rocks and removing the large stumps was hard on my back.  So the rain was not only welcome for the plants, but also for me....lol.  Now I was able to spend some time in my sewing room....guilt free...lol.  I did put in a full day of work and errands, so I deserved the time now to play a bit.

In my sewing room I got to put the borders onto the blue star NICU quilt and finish assembling the houses quilt, so that was nice.  I'll share pictures of those when they are done.  So in the meantime, let me take you back to Oct 27/2019:

This is Mary's quilt.  She made this quilt for her daughter's soon to be born baby (at the time, baby is now 3yrs old).  Mary saw this pattern in a magazine and had to make it.  It is cute and a bit on the modern side, in a minimal sort of way.  I thought the prairie points in the quilt and the marching elephants on the backing also added to the cuteness.  

Because of the prairie points, this quilt had to be custom quilted.  Mary liked the way the pattern in the magazine was quilted and I thought it was very affective, that we did the same/similar thing.  I outlined all the elephants on the top, stitched in the ditch of the individual blocks, and did random lines with changing directions for the different coloured background blocks.  Here is a picture of the back.  Didn't I tell you it was cute....  It's so cute you could even use it as a reversable two sided quilt.

Sometimes it is hard to show the quilting off well, so I took a few different angles in hopes that I captured it all.  Mary's piecing was so precise that I didn't have to use a ruler for the quilting.  I was able to even do the ditch work using the channel lock feature on my longarm. 

These next two pictures are close ups of the quilting.  I don't normally take pictures this close, however there is a feature of the quilting that you cannot see in the overall pictures.  You don't notice this feature until you get up close and personal with the quilt.  The theme colours of the quilt are basically mint green, aqua light blue, and a peachy orange.  What I did sporadically throughout the quilt, is strategically insert lines of those colours, to add interest to the all grey background.  It really does make a difference.  You don't see it well in the pictures when you look at the whole quilt, but in person, you do see a bit of something and it draws you in to have a closer look. 

I hope you enjoyed this quilt.  I enjoyed working on it.  It took me outside of the usual stuff.  Though it is modern and not everyone's taste, I think there is enough interest going on to keep your attention.

Today, it is currently all wet out there, as it rained through the night, so I can't go finish planting the pots.  Instead I will be downstairs, quilting customer quilts.  Enjoy your day!!