Elephants on my design wall

I'm trying to figure out how to put my elephant quilt together. I started making the small ones intending to use them as a border around the 9 larger elephants, but I realized pretty quickly that all those extra small elephants were going to make the quilt larger than I wanted it to be. I guess that's the danger of working with elephants! I am making this quilt to hang on a wall at the top of a staircase, and I don't want it to get too large for that space.

This morning I was just struck by the idea of lining up the small elephants I'd already completed and using them within the main body of the quilt. I actually really like this plan, because it makes the quilt a bit more interesting. I always like to include something a little unexpected. It's funny to me that the small elephants are going in one direction, and the large elephants are going the other way. That's a bit how life works sometimes! To be honest, this happened because when I shrank the pattern down to the small size and in order to paper-piece the small elephants, the design, of course, was flipped. It was the happiest of "mistakes" and I decided it was actually coming out just the way I wanted.

Next I will need to experiment with sashing, borders and quilting. I am thinking of throwing in a couple of horizontal strips above and below the band of small elephants. I will give it a try and see how it looks before I make any decisions. I've found with sashing and borders especially that I really need to see what I'm thinking about before I make up my mind. It's amazing how many times I've planned to use one fabric, and then realized at the last minute that a different fabric would be much better.