Today, two twin elephants joined the world (fraternal, not identical). I made these two elephants as gifts following the pattern for “Peanut, the wee elephant” by Hillary Lang of Wee Wonderfuls, as published in Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. The last time I made one of these elephants (these are my third and fourth), a reader of my blog asked me to take pictures illustrating each of the steps the next time I made an elephant. It is with permission from both Hillary Lang and Joelle Hoverson, that I am sharing these photos:
Step 4. Assemble Body
Belly
Under-Trunk, Belly, and Back
Sides
Step 5. Close Trunk
Step 6. Turn Right Side Out
I didn’t photograph this step but my hint for a successful elephant is to stuff and stuff and stuff some more. There is nearly always room for a little more stuffing. I also stitch back and forth a couple of times at the opening.
Step 7. Make Ears
Step 8. Make Blanket
After three elephants, I decided that this was the most difficult step of all. The blanket is simply too cute to skip but if you iron under the 1/2″ seam on your two blanket pieces and then line them up, you will find that it is very hard to make this precise. For the fourth elephant, I decided to put my blanket pieces right sides together and stitched about a 1/2″ from the edge, leaving an opening. I turned and hand stitched the opening. I think that the blanket looks a lot neater and I am more happy with it this way.
Step 9
For my tails, because I don’t have a lot of yarn but do have a lot of embroidery floss, I use 12 strands of embroidery floss per tail, divided into groups of 4 for braiding. Here is a close up of the tail shot (mostly because it is cute!)
