Baby Elephant Walk

In life we all have those friends we can go months without talking and pick up right where we left off.  My friend Amber is one of those friends for me, we've been friends since junior high and lived together when I first started teaching.  All three of the roommates got married within 6 months and life gets in the way so even though we live pretty close we don't always keep in real contact as well as we should.  Last year Amber and I were walking together pretty regularly but then the weather kept getting in the way and next thing I know it's been months since I saw her in person and I got an invitation to her baby shower.  I hadn't even known they were expecting, but I knew right away that I needed to make a quilt. The only problem was that the invitation arrived just after the quilt shops were closed as being non-essential.  Fortunately someone had asked about the theme for the nursery on the Facebook invitation so I had something to narrow my search down, I knew the colors were red and shades of grey.  I also knew I had to include an elephant because Amber loves elephants.  One of her bridal shower gifts were elephant salt and pepper shakers and I can still see her playing with them at the shower!
I went on the website for my local quilt shop, Humble Stitch in Newport and found a red and black buffalo check I knew would work well.  I sent a message to see what solids would coordinate well and chose my fabrics by Facebook Messenger.  I ordered my fabrics and picked them up but still really didn't know how I wanted to arrange them.  I found a cute elephant outline online but since we're both working from home I wasn't able to print it, then I was doing some cleaning and I found an appliqué I'd bought on clearance.  They didn't work for my color scheme but there were three sizes so I traced them and decided that I'd appliqué the mommy, daddy and baby elephants to my background.  I finally had a plan.

I based my background on a pattern I'd made recently but in a much simpler version. I basically just wanted the red, plaid and dark grey evenly spaced around the background-simple but not just squares.   Then I appliquéd the elephants onto the background.  By the time I got the top put together it had been decided to cancel the in person shower so I decided that I was going to take the time to hand quilt. I was starting to get nervous that baby would arrive before I finished but I made it in time!
I wasn't able to get as many pictures as I'd like because of having to do porch drop off but I was able to watch Amber's face as she opened her quilt.  I know this is a present she and her baby will cherish.