I have a new grand great nephew! (Aside: Why isn’t it ‘grand nephew’? If my sister is the grandmother and my mother is the great grandmother, then why aren’t I a grand aunt? Why does that relationship get called ‘great’ instead of ‘grand’? Aha! I just looked it up and I *can* [and should] be a grand aunt: https://www.familytreemagazine.com/articles/news-blogs/now-what/aunts-and-uncles-grand-not-great/)
James was born almost a year ago, and was recently adopted by my nephew and his husband. Of course, a new child means a new quilt! When I asked, they said his nursery was in tones of greys and blues, with elephants a big theme. So an elephant quilt it was — I even had some fabric printed with tiny elephants that I used for the appliqued elephants.
Wide vertical strips of various grey fabrics, split by two yellow horizontal strips, with appliqued elephants
In the panel between the two yellow strips, I stitched a row of elephants
Above the topmost yellow strip, I quilted stylised suns, representing the harsh heat of an African summer
For the quilting, I did narrow wavy lines with grasses popping up every so often to represent the ground below the elephants, followed by wider wavy lines representing heat haze, then spiky lines representing mountains in the distance.
Another picture showing the quilting. You can just see the tiny elephants on the fabric used for the appliqued elephants.
I stitched continuous ‘u’ shapes in the yellow strips. They have no particular meaning.
I used an animal alphabet fabric for the backing
And of course, the animal alphabet backing fabric had ‘E for elephant’!
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 
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