An Elephant Never Forgets Bookmark

I am still catching up with the July Zakka Style Sew Along projects. I knew that this bookmark was going to to be finicky - so many others have mentioned how tricky turning through the legs and trunk proved to be - and so it was! It's a nice project that should take only an hour or so but I had trouble with my bottom ribbon when it came time to turn the elephant right-side out.


I made use of a vintage sheet cut off for the dress and Essex linen blend in steel from Fresh Stash. Great colour for elephants!


Tips
I made my elephant silhouette slightly larger to try and combat the turning difficulties.

To get the dress fabric different to the legs and head, I used the pattern traced onto freezer paper and then paper pieced the sections. My new skill - don't forget the Practically Paper Piecing Blog Hop which kicked off today with a pouch tutorial and a give-away - thanks to Kristy of Quiet Play.

Do NOT add the ribbon to the bottom IF it overhangs the bottom of the dress seam. Add it after you have turned the project right-side out. This is where I had trouble turning things through and had to unpick the bottom half of my elephant.

The top orange ribbon was fine but the bottom  one caused me grief!

So I unpicked it, took it off and then resewed it once it was turned right-side out

Use a smaller stitch length to give you extra strength when turning through. I dialled mine down to 1.5

Clip the corners and the curves, before turning, to reduce bulk inside.

Hopefully you can see that I have a small stitch length and have snipped the curves in the seam allowance of the ear BEFORE turning!

I think they would also make a cute Christmas tree decoration given Xmas fabrics and some rick rack to hang it.

You can check out the other elephants on parade at the Flickr group or here.


I am finally linking up with: