Bear Paw Parade Quilt

 

 

Introducing Bear Paw Parade!

This is a new quilt that features in issue 54 of Today’s Quilter which is out now.  I made this quilt using the beautiful Murmur fabric by Valori Wells that Free Spirit sent my at the start of the year. It’s lovely to be able to finally reveal this quilt!

This issue also features an absolutely stunning Scandi Christmas row quilt by Lynne Goldsworthy which completely deserves that cover spot!

If you read the magazine carefully you may also spot the news that I will be taking over the feature column spot from Jo Colwill next month! I am so excited about this and can’t wait to share more about it when issue 55 comes out.

Considering the name of my blog and studio it’s amazing that this is the first Bear Paw quilt I have ever written about here!

A bear paw quilt was actually the first quilt I finished. I made it as part of a ’round robin’ (what I would now call a bee) held by my first quilting group the Abbey Quilters of Kelso.  At the time I was in my early twenties and only new how to EPP. The Abbey Quilters were the ones who introduced me to rotary cutters and strip piecing for which I will be forever grateful.

My best friend was about to be married and I wanted to make her a quilt. The idea of the Round Robin (where the other members would make most of the blocks for me) seemed a fantastic solution.

I don’t know why I chose a Bear Paw block but that was what we did and Lisi was very pleased with this quilt (though goodness knows I don’t think I would be, if I saw it again now!). I don’t have a photo I’m afraid but I seem to remember there was a lot of bottle green involved!

10 years ago when I started this blog with the help of my sons the name Bear Paw was the first thing that sprang to mind when they asked me what I wanted to call it. And here we are now all these years later!

So back to this present quilt.  When the TQ editor was asking me if I had any ideas for new quilts for the magazine I remembered that a new Bear Paw quilt had been on my to-do list for a long time.

I wanted to play around with the traditional block design, still keeping that ‘paw’ motif but making it look a bit different.

This is what I came up with. I elongated the paws and split the block into quarters using the same pale grey as the sashing. I added orange cornerstones between and in the centre of the blocks.

The gorgeous prints needed space to breath so instead of a contrasting background to the paws I kept it deliberately low contrast and paired different prints from the collection.  The word that springs to mind when I look at this quilt is ‘splashy’ and I’m not really sure why!

For the quilting I chose one of my favourite patterns, a spiral in the centre of a flower, and I mixed things up a bit by echoing around the petals. I used a pink variegated 50wt Aurifil for the FMQ, which as always, was done on my domestic Janome 9400.

I think the style of this one sits pretty firmly in the middle of modern and traditional.

It has that bright cheery scrappy look that I love the best!