A Take On Bear Paw

As my blog posts get more scarce, so is my quilt making. However in the past month a lot of quilts I made earlier have come into the limelight. Let me start with the first one.  A variant on the Bear Paw block.

This quilt was a long time in the making. About 3 years ago when I was undergoing physical therapy, while recovering from a knee injury I would find myself often staring at my shoes. The colors of the shoes really struck a chord with me and I decided to use them in my next quilt. Inspiration comes from the strangest of places!

There was a pattern I had been toying with in EQ7 for a while now which started as a Bear Paw block but ultimately evolved into this. 

These are the shoes that inspired the color scheme.

The Kona cotton colors that were used:

• Nautical
• Germanium
• Robin Egg    

The quilting is an all over Baptist Fan pattern beautifully executed by Pam Cole. Pam is such a pleasure to work with.

This was the first time I made a quilt with a dark background and I really like how it makes the blocks pop. I see a lot more dark quilts in my future. 

Leaving off with a few more pictures.

Begonia Quilt

I started this quilt as part of a mystery BOM designed by Stephanie Satterwhite hosted by Seattle MQG. Having never done a mystery quilt before I was skeptical at first but knowing Stephanie I knew it would be a great pattern. I decided to use fabrics from my stash only and found that I had a stack of pink Kona cottons available since I rarely use the color. The pink was quite overwhelming so used a complementary color to balance it out. The blue fabric is from Modern Solids II collection by In The Beginning fabrics. I absolutely love that color.

This was the palette I finally settled on.

I documented the progress along the way.

Added a 6 inch border to frame the quilt and decided on straight line quilting to accentuate the pattern and not take away from it. 

The BOM was a lot of fun and it was interesting to see everyone's progress over the year. There were some amazing color palettes and you can see all of them using #begoniaquilt on Instagram. I finished this just in time for my niece's college graduation and I know will be much appreciated.