Elephant

Oooh, I've just noticed, he has his rear right leg cocked slightly!

He isn't quite what I had in mind when I started. I was hoping for something a bit more... colourful? The reason I used the grey mohair was that the design was still 'in progress', and I wanted to use a fabric that I wouldn't mind losing, if it all went terribly wrong. This grey mohair has been sitting around for ages - I thought I'd never use it. It's hardly the most lustrous of fabrics. However, its one great advantage is that it's elephant-coloured.

So, he's not a loud, crazy-print creature to take centre stage - just a quiet little thing to stand in the background looking on.

My toenail plans didn't work out. The problem was that, in order to avoid having to hem the edges of each toenail, I had to use quite a thick fabric - felt or fleece or cashmere. And, at least with such tiny pieces, these fabrics are not particularly flexible - so they didn't move with the fabric of the elephanet, but sort of stuck out awkwardly.

And I didn't go for the hat, since I was going for a realistic colour.

But I did manage the tail - and that, I'm quite proud of! I quite liked the type of tail I used to do - which was like a strip of fabric, knotted at one end and attached to the elephant with a button (an Eyore-type tail). Since I was going for the natural look though, I thought I'd try for the little frayed, scrap of a tail that real elephants have. It works - although, for some reason, that too curves to the right! Hmmm.

If this is going to be a design that I make lots of however, some variation is required. I would like to use up the rest of the grey mohair (sadly, since it was on sale, I bought lots of it), but I'm going to try a few other, more interesting, fabrics as well.