Indian Elephant is a good tapestry to stitch at any time of the year. In the dark winter months the design’s strong shapes and clear colours make stitching in the evening stitching a pleasure, and what’s more there are absolutely no fiddly bits or pesky shading. Quite simply, you can relax!
If you’re already enjoying stitching an Elephant, your thoughts may be turning to having it made into a cushion. Many elephants have found their way to our Somerset workshop in the last few years, and today we’re sharing some ideas for colours and fabric that you could consider if sending your finished tapestry to us to make into a cushion.
Standard making up, or mitred border? One question to ask yourself is whether you’d like your cushion to have a piped edge and backing (as in our first three images below), or whether you’d like it to have an additional fabric border around it. This is down to personal preference, as the Indian Elephant design (approx. 15″ x 15″) is a good size for a cushion. Over to you, and there really is no right or wrong.
If you go for the standard and popular option of piping and backing only, here are a few ideas. From our range of wool blend fabric, a deep terracotta works well for piping, as does a dark red.
Perhaps you’d like us to make up your cushion with contrast piping and backing?
This combination of citrus yellowy lime looks stunning, with a damson backing. These are two fabrics from our cotton range.
For more cotton fabric inspiration, let’s have a look at some of the colour boards that George has put together. All of these shades are available for your Indian Elephant, or any other tapestry you may have completed. We really like our cotton fabric. It’s a good quality, a nice weight, and has a textured finish. Some of the colours when put together have a Farrow and Ball look to them, while with others (as the Indian Elephant above), you can achieve a stronger contrast.
First off, the greens. Yellow Lime JRCG03 and Bright Lime JRCG04 are popular choices for piping. Putting the *ping* into piping!!
For a quieter option, you might decide to pick out a neutral or terracotta shade for your cushion – or mix one of these with another colour?
Damson and Aubergine are great with Indian Elephant. Please note that in our pinky/purple cotton family, the Pink JRCP02 and Lavender JRCP04 are smoother than the other fabric as they are from a different supplier. They are both good upholstery weight fabrics.
On to the red cottons, and Robin JRCR01 or Raspberry JRCR03 would be a good choice for Indian Elephant. These two shades are often used on our Christmas stockings too.
On to our wool blend range. This is a really sturdy fabric and can withstand rough treatment from children, adults and pets!
Our teal fabric works well with the Elephant, and is used here for the 2″ border as well as the piping and backing.
Another Indian Elephant with a 2″ border, this time all in cream cotton.
Now on to Stephen’s Indian Elephant which the sharp eyed among you will notice has undergone a colour change. Stephen was under instructions to stitch an Indian Elephant to coordinate with a young family member’s bedroom, so he ordered an Indian Elephant printed canvas on its own and set about changing the colours.
A look at some of the wool blend fabrics available, starting with our purples.
The reds…
On this board Terracotta JRWY05 is the most popular choice for Indian Elephant. It’s a great shade that picks up the colour of the elephant.
Availability of particular colours/fabric We keep very good stock of all of our fabrics, and are constantly adding to our ranges wherever we can. However, manufacturers do sometimes discontinue particular shades often with no prior warning. Please email kelly@jollyred.co.uk or call Jolly Red on 01460 281111 if you need to check that a particular colour is in stock.
Do get in touch Feel free to contact us about any tapestry that you need advice about, as we’re always happy to help. We also welcome visitors to our Isle Brewers workshop but ask that you call us first rather than just turn up. That way we’ll clear plenty of table space near the fabrics and make sure that we allocate enough time for you. If we stray from this tried and tested system people have a tendency to turn up at the same time!
That’s it for now. Happy stitching, and happy February!
Kelly
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