The Bear

Back at Spring Quilt Market in 2017, I kept seeing images of this quilt.I fell in love, I knew the pattern wouldn’t be available until at least September. When it was, it seemed to be sold mostly as a kit with these specific fabrics. Makes sense, Annie Brady is a new fabric designer and to showcase her line, she designed this quilt. Luckily I was able to purchase just the pattern.With most of my quilts, I’m happy to dig into my stash, but it’s always fun to buy a few new fabrics as well.I like calling this method of construction the Elizabeth Hartman method. Using half square triangles, all kinds of snow balls, one creates the animal. In this case Annie Brady used some pattern pieces as well.At this point, I called the quilt done. I hadn’t paid attention to the size listed on the pattern, 60″x 70″. Numbers don’t mean much to me, but this is a baby quilt. Another row of 10″ blocks all around would make this a very nice youth or lap quilt. So I stopped here. I usually use cotton batting for a baby quilt. No more! All I had was wool and it made the quilting so much easier! I used my ruler on most of the bear, you can see it in the ear. I also did ruler work to create diamonds in the background. It worked really well.Then I went off on vacation in Belize. I was anxious to get back and finish up this bear. This picture is taken after a wash and dry in my machines. Unlike cotton, it crinkled up some, but not a lot, which to be honest I prefer. I find that with cotton batting crinkle, you lose all the quilting definition.  Here it isn’t quite as crisp as it was before washing, but the quilting designs still stand out.See what I mean? Especially on the background.  Where you can’t really see the quilting is on the very busy print fabrics. I mentioned having fun with rulers. I used them all over the bear itself. I’m so happy that my ruler work is improving. Using wool batting is a big part of that success. Working on a small quilt is also much easier.Using up stash fabric for the backing. You get a better sense of the quilting on the back. Some artistic shots.

The baby for whom this quilt is intended was born the day I finished this. I will be visiting him in Israel next month and will hand deliver the package.

I loved this project, I’m also excited to start working on some new quilts in 2018.

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Leah

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