African Safari - Jacomina de Regt - "Splash"

   

This is my plan B as the fabrics I had selected for this challenge lie in my studio in the US and I had to devise a totally different quilt with the very limited selection of fabrics I have in Amsterdam.  Thanks to Covid-19, I am "sheltering in place" here and can't go shopping for fabric either, because the street market where the fabric stores are located is closed.  

Yet this elephant totally captures the joy I still feel when I think back to the first time I saw a herd of elephants.  In 1978, my first time in East/Southern Africa, I was working in Tanzania and the task was to make the Serengeti more accessible for tourism, think, building an international airport, improving road and sewage infrastructure in Arusha, training of national park rangers, setting up a hotel school, studying the potential impact on the local culture of receiving masses of tourists etc. etc.  Loads of meetings.  But on Sunday a ranger took us out super early into the Serengeti and a herd of elephants with little babies came upon us.  It was awesome in the real sense of the word: inspiring an emotion of awe, and I have never forgotten this majestic moment.

I have since had the privilege of being on safari in different national parks in different countries.  It was fun, in preparation for this challenge, to look through the photographs of the safari in Kruger park with my parents and kids.   My plan A was to create some kind of story line of being inside a safari vehicle, using a car window frame and mirror, and having real animals outside the window.  I had found a fabric in my stash that had real depictions of the "big five".  Somehow, I also wanted to show a list of animals the safari guests had spotted, so a notebloc with tick marks.  Probably much too complicated for such a small size.  

But at least, having seen the pictures again, this background batik did jump out as the proper one. 

The elephant is from a free pattern (Paisley Splash elephant quilt by Myiesha & Katie for Windham Fabrics).   The sky/hill landscape is a remnant but it does capture the gentle rolling landscape I remember from different safaris.

I mounted the quilt and my 20 month old granddaughter is very fond of it.  We imitate the elephant spraying water with movements and sounds.  We will hang it in her room. 

An earlier challenge, "where I dream", captures the memories of other safari trips: a sunset hippo "cruise" on the Zambezi river in Zambia and/or being in the rhino park in Swaziland.  The poem in that blog is still so appropriate. 

https://aroundtheworldin20quilts.blogspot.com/2019/01/where-i-dream-jacomina-de-regt-africa.html