FO: Elephant Abstraction

It's done!!

I'm wicked excited about how this turned out.  I made two major modifications to the color scheme, namely using a lighter yellow for the background and substituting a plain white for the "cream" color used in the tusks.  I did use cream for the toenails as called for in the pattern.  

Here it is before a wash (and well after dark, on the floor):

As you can see, there's not a lot of contrast where the white bits in the ears meet the yellow; that would have looked better with the gold background.   

Here it is after a wash, nicely wrinkly:

For about every 3rd or so line of quilting, I switched directions and quilted back the other way, to prevent too much biasing.  You can tell there's some pulling if you look at the yellow sections, but I didn't think it looked too bad. 

Here's the very boring back:

I had enough of the gold to cover the whole back, so I took the easy option.  You can see in this picture how non-straight the quilting lines get about a third of the way from the bottom - it's not super-noticeable on the front.  

The pattern is here, and I got a quilt kit for it (that had the original fabric selections) from Hawthorne Threads - an awesome birthday present.  Overall, this was actually a pretty good project to learn paper piecing on, because it's all solids. 

My backing fabric for Plinko Patchwork has arrived, as has fabric for skirts for each of my little ones, as has a fq stack of shot cottons for a custom quilt that I'm going to trade for a handmade spinning wheel:

Though these aren't in the color range I usually favor, I can certainly see the appeal.  The yellows/oranges/reds form a really pretty gradient.  The people I making the quilt for liked my weathervane island quilt, so I'm going to design a bigger one for this project.  

And, because two projects I am champing at the bit to get started on aren't enough, there are now two little teeny tiny preemie babies in the NICU who I thought I had a lot more time to quilt for.  But, no, I didn't, so that's on the list as well. 

I cashed it in super early last night, and will probably do the same tonight, because I'm tired.  I have quilts to design, fabric to iron, backings to make, and several things to knit, but I'm tired.  Sometimes you just have to sleep instead of make stuff.  

Linking to Finish it Up Friday over at crazymomquilts.  

Happy crafting!