Bear Paw baby quilt

Another Bear Paw, I really enjoy making this block so much!  This baby quilt was for a Uni friend who had a baby girl during the summer.  I had lots of this gorgeous elephant fabric which I used to make curtains for my son's nursery previously and I thought my friend would really like it.  It's an organic cotton, I think Birch fabrics, I got from M is for Make way back in 2013/2014.  I think I've had the orange Atelier Brunette, also bought from M is for Make, almost as long.  When I put them together I thought it would work but I had a moment of doubt while making it.  Thankfully it worked out well and they match perfectly I say!

 My son makes a perfect quilt model helper doesn't he?! After making the Bear Paw cushion I knew I wanted this baby quilt to be one giant bear paw block.  I had a wee look online and found the brilliant Scrappy Bear Paw baby quilt tutorial from Jeni Baker of In Color Order.  I already followed Jeni on instagram and admired her quilt patterns but hadn't seen this tutorial before.  The instructions include cutting measurements for a version from scraps or from yardage. I only just had enough of the orange but luckily had enough of the elephants that I could back it with that too.

The quilting is just a simple grid quilt pattern which I think looks really good with this block.  The batting is the Quilter's Dream orient quilt batting, bought from Cotton Patch.  The quilting is done with Aurifil 50wt thread.  I was in such a rush to get on with this quilt that I completely forgot to square off the half square triangles! So if you look closely you can see the points aren't all the same, I also somehow managed to attach some of them the wrong way round.  In spite of that I still love how this turned out and the recipient seemed really happy with it too!

Improv Quilt

This quilt was started way back in 2017 when I made my 'Little Critters' quilt. It's funny as I'd say pink and yellow are my favourite colours yet I seem to make a lot of quilts out of blue and yellow! The block in my Little Critters quilt was called the 'Odds and Ends' quilt from Quilting Happiness' by Christina Lane & Diane Gilleland.  Making this block left me with lots of little odds and ends, and when I put them together with the scraps from the quilt I thought they would make a good quilt back.  I put the scraps together in some different shapes and as it started to grow I realised I'd like to make it into a quilt top so used something else to back the quilt and decided to keep working on this top. It started off quite small then I put it aside for two years as I couldn't decide what to do with it.  Earlier this year I found the folder with all the scraps in it so I bought some more of the white & black triangles and just started improvising again. It was so much fun just to let this develop naturally.

Some of it was left over shapes from the other quilt - the lines of black and white fabric so I used them as the were. With the other scraps I made some half square triangles for some shapes.  The most fun bit though was just picking up small scraps, stitching them together without too much thought then making these new pieces into different shapes and patterns. I loved this process and think I'll do some more improv quilts in 2020.

I used a polyester eco batting made from recylced plastic bottles from Cotton Patch as I planned for this quilt to be a picnic blanket and thought that would be quite hardwearing. However it's currently residing on our couch as a winter blanket!

The quilting pattern is from 'Walk: master machine quilting with your walking foot' by Jacqui Gering.  I bought myself a Hera marker so I could try some of the patterns in this book with a bit more ease and it's definitely my favourite new sewing tool!

You can see some of the different stages of this quilt in the photos below. It's nice to have another quilt in our house and I plan to make more for myself and our home next year!

the 'odds and ends' block where the scraps that started this quilt came from