Now we’re on the run up to the New Year I can share a couple more presents I made. These were for my daughter Helen and as she reads my blog I couldn’t share them before.

Triangles first…

Helen is just about to start at university and she put in a request for some bunting to cheer up her room. I made some a couple of years ago for our village hall, a 30m length, I used May Martin’s book as she has some good instructions in it for a quick way of making proper bunting. By proper bunting I mean double sided, not just pinked or zig-zagged.

I found the book and reminded myself how to do it, you basically just draw a lattice on the back of one piece, put right sides together and stitch a seam either side and then cut out the triangles and turn. Bingo! I stitched about a 5m length, it looks really pretty.

The second present I made for Helen was a surprise, she’s into elephants at the moment, I’m just about to make her an elephant quilt but I knew I had no chance of making it by Christmas, so I decided to make a little something else. My inspiration was this picture on Folksy and the Paisley Elephant quilt.

I stitched my elephant first, I adapted the pattern from the Paisley Elephant as he looks a very cheerful elephant! I attached it with bondaweb and blanket stitched round. Next to do was the hearts. I used a pretty scrap of  colourful flowery fabric, attached a square of bondaweb and cut several hearts out freehand.

I spent ages arranging them, working out how many I needed, before I ironed them on and then stitched a sort of star into the middle of each one to secure it properly. My original plan was to then add beads and buttons but I could find ones that were just right.

I decided to embroider a back-stitch around each heart to sort of elongate it, rather like the paisley shapes on the quilt. I used a DMC variegated thread, it’s one of those that looks really weird at first, it’s a funny mixture of pink/peach, blue, green and purple, but it worked perfectly.

I was so pleased with the effect I got a bit carried away…I embroidered ‘splash lines’ with french knots at the end to extend the line of the hearts a little.

The ear was lined with the same floral print with bondaweb behind. I also interfaced the grey to make sure it would hold it’s shape then blanket-stitched round the edge and also used the blanket stitch to secure the ear on at the base. A small shiny black bead was used for his eye

Once I was happy with the embroidery I just had to mount it in a frame. Whilst I was at the Knitting & Stitching show I saw some really pretty embroidery hoops on a stall, some were painted, others were covered with liberty prints, I fell for a floral liberty print and it works brilliantly with my elephant. Having secured the embroidery in the hoop, I trimmed the edges down to about 1″, glued it to the inside of the hoop, cut a piece of batting to line the back and then happened to spot some pretty blue shiny cardboard packing, I cut a circle and it fit so snug it didn’t even need gluing!

A little ribbon to hang it from was the finishing touch…

She loves it 🙂

I will be sharing this on Sunday on Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, why not have a look what everyone else has been stitching.