Bear Paws – Vintage Reimagined | If These Threads Could Talk

The fabrics in this post were given to me by Island Batik.

Island Batik Ambassador assignment for March is “Vintage Reimagined”. Hmmmm, I had several ideas, some just didn’t work out. I started to look through my quilt book library. I picked up Harriet Hargraves’ Heirloom Machine Quilting book. I was intrigued by a small quilt, 35″ x 35″ called Bountiful Vineyard by Joanie Poole. Turns out Joanie Poole teaches heirloom quilting. This is ironic (more on this later).

I chose to use the Snow Berry collection, simple gorgeous. I went to my EQ8 and started drawing.

Once I created the block I could also figure out the quilt layout. I love this block!

First I made the Bear Paw unit. I used Deb Tucker’s “Eight at a Time” Technique Sheet to make fast work of 80 Half Square Triangles.

Then add the side rectangles.

Pop off the corner of the rectangles using the Studio 180 Design Corner Pop tool.

Add replacement triangles according to the tool instructions and trim. Easy peasy, the Corner pop tool trims the corner & leaves the seam allowance so adding the replacement triangle is accurate with plenty to perfectly trim.

Stitch the corner popped rectangles to the bear paw unit. Make 20 – 10″ finished blocks.

I laid it out on my design wall, stitched it together and added the borders.

I usually meander my quilts on my Nolting mid arm, but this time I decided to quilt each quarter diagonally with all seams going toward the center with my domestic Bernina 570. It seemed like a good idea. I have never tried this on a large quilt. Bear Tracks measures 70″ x 70″. I stitched in the ditch down the center vertically and horizontally. Then corner to center diagonally. Then stitch in 1/2″ increments, first to the left of the center diagonal then to right. I did this in each quarter stopping at the inner border. What I didn’t realize was how much this close stitching would shrink the center of the quilt, making the borders very wavy. I loaded Bear Tracks onto my quilt frame and meandered the borders to try and shrink them down. It helped a little but the edges of my beautiful quilt are wavy. Drat!

Bear Tracks is wavy, but oh so cuddly. I love it! I think I need a quilting class from Joanie Poole!