Elephant Quilt Back

You're going to get bored with this quilt soon! Hopefully this might be my last post on it before I have the finished product to show you. Today I've been working on the back. I had a little bowl of scraps left over from the front. Scraps that were surprisingly small really.

Now obviously I wouldn't have thrown these out regardless, but I did think it would be lovely to use them in some way on the back of this quilt. I had a browse through my Mini Quilts Board on Pinterest to try and find some inspiration, and came across this Pin, originally from Syko.

Something about an elephant in a tea cup - hot air balloon really appealed to me, and seemed perfect for the back of the quilt. I did a quick, rough sketch on some muslin...

And arranged some of the scraps over the 'balloon'.

I sewed them into strips...

And then on to the 'balloon'...

My second strip went on right sides together on top of the first, before ironing it over and then carrying on with the other strips...

The other parts of the picture I drew on bondaweb and ironed on to fabric. I wanted a different kind of elephant in my tea cup, one gazing up at a star above.

Here it is starting to come together...

And then sewn down, with more detail...

I'm going to 'quilt' the hot air balloon part, and possibly the rest of it too, and I've still got to embroider some words and a name on it.This is just a smallish section to go on the back of the quilt. The rest of the back will be very simple, in fact almost certainly a single piece of fabric from the stripy sheet I've used as the backing here.

And as for the front, my last unfinished block from yesterday? I've made a bit of progress. I found out late last night that the final recipient of this quilt has a very strong connection with this lovely short film, Sogni D'Oro. An Italian phrase that's the equivalent of our 'Sweet Dreams', but that literally means 'Dreams of Gold'. It seemed a beautiful phrase to put on a child's quilt, so that's what went along the bottom, with a couple of stars up the sides. I'm thinking the phrase might go quite well with my star gazing elephant on the back too.

Off to bed now for my own 'sogni d'oro', back tomorrow with a photo from the week, can't believe it will be Friday again. Goodnight,

Sally.