©06/03/16 Indian Elephant

Here is my finished Indian Elephant! 

As you can see it has a different design on each side. I went for a slightly more feminine vs masculine design because I wanted to experiment as much as possible with the stitching to see how it would change the appeal of the product. I created a tusk out of the pointed area under the trunk and on the opposing side I turned this onto a smiling elephant mouth. I attempted to recreate a design at the top, which actually came out looking like a flower, but that was originally from a wall hanging I have which is made out of recycled saaris. 

I decided to sew together the sides using a outer stitch which is really visible because I really like how this added another texture and aesthetic to the piece. I also used this technique because this way I was able to sew together the piece without interrupting any of the design that was already stitched in. I thought I would capitalise on this and use a variation of coloured thread for the inside/lower stitching. I used a perfect colour match for the outer stitching but thought that the colourful theme of the elephant demanded some extra aesthetic interest on the lower area of the elephant because it was lacking in other patterns. 

I am so glad that I thought to include the circular hole at the top of the elephant! It makes the piece so versatile and makes using it as home decor so much easier! I added some white string (which I also used platted together and sewn into with another colour thread to create the elephants tail) to experiment with where I could place it to liven up areas around the house. This included door handles, closet/draw handles, wall hangings, added to mirrors/fairy lights etc. But in the end I found the perfect place for it hanging off the end of my 3D paper wall hangings, they are all connected by a pink ribbon so I just threaded the ribbon through the hole and tied a bow and it looked great! I think in future I would be a lot more structured with the time I spent on this because it takes so much longer than you expect it to! But I loved doing it and found it really therapeutic and fun to spontaneously work into it. However having some mood boards or sketches for designs would definitely create more professional elephants! I also would plan a colour palette for each elephant - this ensures you have enough thread for your design, because running out of thread half way through is so annoying! I think if you wanted to create a chain of them it would be interesting to create a way to tie a ribbon to the bottom or underbelly of the elephant- but I am not sure how good this would actually look! You could tie it from the trunk but this would knock the chain/elephants off balance. I think I will create some really small simple elephant designs to experiment with.