Monday, September 13, 2010


Friday is my quilt group meeting. I need something to work on and just the project to meet that need. Over a year ago I was in the wedding party of a very dear friend, a fellow Scouter. She was marrying another fellow Scouter and both were members of a Woodbadge Bear patrol.


I decided a Bear Paw quilt would be the perfect gift but nothing this big is made by hand in such a short time. I drew up a plan on graph paper and marked out leaf shapes on assorted green scraps. Those I took to the wedding and asked guests to sign them with names and wishes.


After finding out my friend and especially her new husband liked earth tones, I pulled out my collection of greens and browns and cut out the pieces for 24 12in. bear paw blocks... light on dark and dark on light. Imagine having a stash that big! It hardly made a dent.


After the border blocks were finished I drew up a template for the lone star. All the patterns I had in books were for machine piecing so this was a bit taxing to my non-math brain. Now star and inner borders are done and today I finished sewing the blocks around the outer edge. Now it is time to applique the vine and leaves. (I probably should have done this before assembly but I wanted more control over the final placement) Meanwhile, I have enough of the leaf print fabric to add a small border to the outer edge. I am already wondering where I will ever find floor space big enough to lay this out for basting.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Julie

    This is such a lovely idea! I hope you don't mind but I would love to copy it one year ..... now just need another of my friends to get married so I can do just the same. Did everyone sign in permanent ink - are they quite visible? I would love to see a close-up of how it looks.

    I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished quilt.

    Thanks for sharing.

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  2. JelyG,

    Thanks for your comment. The signatures on the leaves are made with a marking pen that is for putting one's name on clothing. I tested several varieties. This one is made by Zebra and has both sharp and broad points.

    As you may imagine, the writing varies with the writer. Some are neater and better balanced but all are legable, even those written in Japanese.

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  3. You do really lovely work! I can't believe you do all your sewing without the aid of a sewing machine!!!
    You left a sweet comment on my blog, so I'm returning the favor. I'll check back with your blog often to see what you are up to. I imagine you have a LOT of inspiration living in such a beautiful country.

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  4. Hi Julie, I couldn't reply to your e-mail question because you are set up as "no reply" in your e-mail. You may want to change that setting. Anyways, I mostly machine piece these days but I used to do all hand piecing and hand quilting. Now I machine quilt some and send some out to be machine quilted.

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