Pink Elephant

Our neighbours recently had a baby girl. I had some kids' fabric and I actually bought 1/2 m of pink (not much because I probably wouldn't use a lot of pink). Sew.... I thought I'd use the pink and some of the kid fabric to make a quilt. One of the fabric print themes I have is a circus print. I was fishing around for an idea to incorporate a circus theme - I'm not too focused on kids' stuff so needed a bit of inspiration. Off to the library.

One of the books I picked up is Lickety-Split Quilts for Little Ones by Laurie Bevan. On page 34 she has her "Baby Elephant" quilt, which, when I read the fine print, measures about 27 by 36 inches. Elephants are found at the circus. Good idea.

Laurie Bevan said "I changed the traditional Ararat block ever so slightly to make this wonderful elephant look like a baby." Well that made me wonder "what the heck is an Ararat block?" So off to Google I went.

Ararat is a mountain in Turkey with some biblical significance. I think I knew that somewhere in the back of my mind.

But what I didn't know is that the elephant is the symbol for the Republican Party in the US. I guess this has long been the case, but I'm always the last to know these important details.

There is an elephant quilt block called the "Ararat block" - apparently Ararat was the name of the elephant in a zoo and the elephant block was designed originally with no political intentions, but has essentially been adopted by the Republicans. The actual block is half square rectangles but I just copied it off in squares (I didn't use Laurie's).

And like the original, mine is intended to be only a circus elephant - no political intentions here. My elephant quilt top from border to border is about 52 by 40 inches. The backing will be a circus theme. I didn't take a pix of the backing tonight because it needs to be pressed and I'm out of time, but will put it up when the quilt is finished.

OK -here is the backing - still not pressed. But good enough to give you the idea. Will post a better pix when the quilt is finished.