Leather Elephant

This went much quicker than I thought it would. And I can tell you that quilting on good leather is much nicer than quilting on the Uncle Johnny leather. haha    Uncle Johnny worked in the stock yards his whole life....so, who knows where he got that calf hide. hahaha

I got the pattern from an UJ magazine called Make it with Leather (formerly The Craftsman)...dated April 1975.  The man never threw anything away, but i am happy he kept these magazines because I have 7 more animal patterns to use.

The picture in the magazine...

The pattern...full size...it is 22" square....more or less....

Here you go... This black leather is a cow hide....so soft and nice feeling.

And a bit from the side. I used 2 layers of Warm and Natural batting.

A few close ups

I quilted over the elephant lines more than once so it would stand out....but the bushes were just quilted once usually...unless i was traveling to another area.

For this one, I tried sewing pieces of leather binding together...just like fabric. I did the binding the same as the last one....cut a piece 1", folded it over, and sewed it down. I stopped about 1/4" from the corner and cut the thread. Then folded the corner down and sewed to the next corner. It turned out pretty good. 

The back is a piece of cotton fabric from the stash. And i put a hanging sleeve on this one. I will hand stitch it down tonight.

And a couple of back close ups

I used Glide for the top thread...a silvery gray...and So Fine light brown for the bobbin. Two bobbins did the whole thing. I did have some thread breakage issues toward the end. I solved the problem by changing out the needle. But that first leather longarm needle quilted that first little horse, the sampler, and 90% of the elephant. I think that is awesome.