Thursday is Purse Day - Elephant Tote

I went to The Sewcial Lounge last week to check out their new location and store.  It's easy to get to, parking is right out front, and the store is bright and airy.  

I wanted to pick up a little something I needed to complete a chair project, and she had the exact match that I needed.  Wandering around, admiring everything, I found some beautiful Echino fabric with an elephant on it.  I made a quick decision that it would be perfect for a tote bag to use at Quilt Expo.

Here it is - and it couldn't have been easier or faster.  I made it in just a few hours, and it's even reversible.

Here's what made it so easy - Sara's Sewcial Tote pattern.  I probably could have made a tote bag without it, but why waste all the time and energy trying to figure things out when you can just follow directions?  This pattern has three variations - I made what's called The Simple Tote, which is gusseted.

The other thing that made it easy was I bought webbing for the handle.  Sara has so many varieties that I had a hard time deciding on just the right one. 

This Echino fabric is a nice medium-weight linen.

To fuse the interfacing to the fabric, I cut the interfacing a little larger than the 18" x 18" squares of fabric.  Then I used an applique pressing sheet, made out of a non-stick material.

Lay your pressing sheet on your ironing board.  Then place your fabric on top if it, right side down.  Lastly, lay the interfacing on the fabric, sticky side down, so it adheres to the wrong side of your fabric.

You can see in this picture how much of the interfacing is overlapping the fabric.  I like to leave at least 1/2" all around, to make sure the fabric is completely covered.  When you press this, the gunk on the interfacing goes onto your applique pressing sheet, and not on your ironing board or your iron.

After it cools for a minute, trim to the appropriate size.

 

Here's the other side, also an Echino print.  Totally reversible, nice and sturdy, all ready to go shopping.

Pink Felt Elephant

I bought a bunch of felt this spring, to make some cute little projects.

The first one was this pink elephant, from a pattern in Stitched Whimsy.  She's 11" from the tip of her trunk to the tip of her tail, and 6" tall.  Her inner ears are flannel, but the rest of her is felt.

The ears of the African elephant are nearly 3 times larger than the ears of the Asian elephant.  They have a dense grid of blood vessels that help disperse internal heat.  The hotter it is, the more they flap their ears.  If there's a breeze, they face into it and stretch their ears out in order to obtain the maximum cooling effect.

Tea for Tuesday - Elephant Teapot

Day three of elephant appreciation...

This teapot was the first elephant object I bought.  I found it at Pier One years ago, when not many places were selling teapots.  I used to buy every teapot I found, until they became popular and I could be more selective.

Orphan infant elephants are difficult to raise because they are completely dependent on their mother's milk for their first two years, and partially dependent for another two.  Daphne Sheldrick and her husband David, founding warden of Tsavo East National Park in Kenya, spent decades trying to find a formula that matched the mother's milk.  They finally had success, shortly before David's death, in 1977.

Their recipe was a mixture of human baby formula and coconut.  But this recipe works as well:
9.5 pints raw cow's milk
9.5 ounces cream
24 egg whites
4 pounds well-boiled rice water

Monday is Fun Day - Elephant Statues

I've been on the lookout for elephant items lately.  There's lots in the stores; I guess they're trendy.  I only wish that a portion of the purchase price would go towards preservation of the species and habitat.

I bought these two at a resale shop last month.  The one on the left is a whiskey decanter; on the right is a marble figurine.

Elephants emit sounds at frequencies too low for humans to hear.  In normal conditions, elephants can communicate at distances up to 2.5 miles, but depending on the time of day and type of sound, it can be as far as 6 miles.  This explains the sometimes synchronized behavior between distant herds.

They also communicate with their body language, using their trunk and ears.  A lifted trunk with the tip pointing downward means they're undecided or trying to figure something out.

A lowered and twisted trunk means a conflict between fear and curiosity.  Ears straight out at a 90-degree angle from their  head signals aggression. 

Not Just Another Pretty Face

     The planet does not belong to the human race alone.
                                                                 --- Martin Saller

Elephants and pigs, two of our planet's most intelligent species, much abused by humankind.  Today kicks off a week of elephant appreciation.

The emotional life of elephants is deep and varied, ranging from happiness to sadness and depression.  Physical contact is important - they often rest against each other or touch one another with their trunk.  They are similar to humans in regards to love, loyalty, and familial bonds, and they deeply mourn the death of a family member.

Elephants have different vocalizations for pleasure (purring), pain (rumbling), loneliness and boredom in captivity (moaning squeal) and anger (hiss.)

Making It Mine - Knobs

Making It Mine is a series where I show an item I bought, then changed in order to make it more to my liking.

Five years ago I bought this small dresser with the knobs you see in the front.  They were fine for awhile.  Seems like everything is fine for awhile.  But after a few months, I made new knobs.

Here it is with the new knobs I made.  Basically, I glued beads, buttons, ribbons, and trim on a plain white knob.  Between the drawer front and the knob is either a small piece of fabric or paper.

Heart buttons; fabric background.

Both beads and buttons.  The background is paper, now faded from what used to be bright yellow.  I should replace it.

See that teardrop-shaped, gold-rimmed bead on the right?  That's the same kind that I used as the umbrella tip on my R is for Rain quilt.

 

Two buttons, furry trim, paper backing.  Again - I should swap out that faded paper.

The house button is also on R is for Rain.  I had forgotten it was on this knob.

Here you have a clear view of the white knob that is the base on which all the gorp is glued.  This has just two buttons - the large pink flower, with an orange/pink one glued over the button holes.

Kaffe Fassett scrap in the background.

Two buttons - orange square and a cute sand pail.  Trim circles the white knob, backed by fabric that has no intention of fading.  Ever.

Three buttons, nice and simple.  That paper used to be lime green.  

 

From this view, you can see more of the trim - sometimes I wrapped it on the shank of the knob; sometimes I glued it along the edges.

R is for Rain

I finished a quilt yesterday.  Our quilt guild is having a challenge where you make a mini-quilt with a theme that starts with the letter "R".  I've wanted to do an umbrella quilt for a long time, and I recently (and accidentally) unearthed some forgotten charm squares with a rain theme.  Rain + umbrella = works for me.

The squares were given to me a few years ago.  I had enough to make one nine-patch for the front, and another for the back.  The quilt is supposed to be 12" but because I used charm squares, it came in a little larger, at 14" square.

I put the darkest square in the center, then fused a 4-section bright yellow umbrella over them all.

Umbrellas have pointy things at the top, so I found a pointy bead to use up there.

You can see that each of the umbrella sections is a different fabric.  I just dug through my yellow scraps until I found four that looked good together.

I machine stitched the fused edges, then tried a succession of different handwork until I found one I liked.  I settled on chain stitches since they looked like a drop of water, then added a seed bead at the top of each one for some sparkle.

The bottom of the umbrella is edged in bugle and seed beads.  At the pointy ends, I stacked two sizes of beads to look like the spoke ends.

Tucked under the umbrella, seen through the distance of the stormy grey sky, is our destination: a happy place.  Sun shines down on a cute little pink house, flowers in the garden, and a dog in the front yard.

The quilting is sheets of rain falling down.  I hand-stitched the binding, not my usual machine stitching.

The back. 

With all the embroidery on the front, the back wasn't as neat as I would have liked.  I tried to carry stitches where I could, but there still remained enough visible ones.  I had a plan to make a big fat cloud label, big enough to cover the mess.  But that would have covered up too many of the cute squares, so I made a downsized cloud instead, and told myself to relax about it.