Blooming Bear Tracks {Home Grown Hop with Benartex}

Today I'm excited to wrap up the month of February by showing off some secret sewing that I have been working on all month!

Welcome to my stop on the Home Grown Hop!

There are certain designers that I *always* jump at the chance to play with their lovely fabrics -- and Nancy Halvorsen is one of them! Before I was deep into quilting myself, my mom was already a quilter and one of her favorite designers has long been Nancy Halvorsen and passed on her love to me!

This fabric line is fun and cheery and includes some great basics that I would tend to hoard in yards if I had more space!

Since I already needed to make a baby quilt for a friend, I decided to use some of the fat quarters of Home Grown to make a "blooming" version of our Bear Tracks pattern. I used both large floral prints, reds, pinks, and greys for my quilt top.

I had to make a lot of half-square triangles! I used three main pairs of fabrics to make my blocks.

One bear paw down, over a dozen to go!

I used the floral prints mainly for the large spacer squares that are in between the blocks. They are almost too pretty to cut up!

With only 25 blocks, this quilt top zipped together quickly!

I decided to skip the border on this and to quilt the quilt at this size. I used a slightly abstract floral motif for the free motion quilting and used a medium grey Aurifil thread for the quilting.

I used a piece of flannel for the backing and I used a half-yard from my stash to make bias binding.

I top stitched the binding and now this quilt is ready for some baby snuggles!

Quilt Stats:
Name: Blooming Bear Tracks
Pattern: Bear Tracks by HBD
Fabrics: Home Grown by Nancy Halvorsen
Quilting: Abstract floral in grey Aurifil
Size: 40" square
Started: February 2019
Finished: February 2019
Future: Baby quilt for a friend

Now it's your chance to win some fat quarters of Home Grown for yourself! Leave comments to enter and up to two comments per person!

1. Leave one comment and tell me which of the Home Grown Prints is your favorite. I love the navy background floral. Click here to see the entire Home Grown collection. 

2. Leave one comment if you follow me in some form or fashion -- if you follow my blog, Instagram, Facebook.

Update: the giveaway is now closed --OhioLori is our winner!

Make sure to check out all of the other bloggers on the Home Grown Hop!

Monday
Introducing Home Grown @ Sew in Love with Fabric

Tuesday
Debby @ Debby Kratovil Quilts
Kelly @ My Quilt Infatuation


Wednesday
Carol @ Just Let Me Quilt
Nancy @Masterpiece Quilting


Thursday
Jennie @ Clover and Violet
Alison @ Little Bunny Quilts


Friday
Nancy's Virtual Trunk Show @ Sew in Love with Fabric

Playful Pillows {May Island Batik Ambassador Project}

This month, our Island Batik Ambassador theme is Playful Pillows!

I have never made a pillow or quilted pillow cover before (I made some really simple pillowcases years ago for my husband) so this is a fun adventure for me! As always, all of the fabrics have been generously given to me by Island Batik!

I decided that I wanted to make a pillow to match the baby quilt that I made last month. Here's that quilt:

Rather than making a one block pillow from the same pattern, I decided to use the same fabrics with the mini quilt pattern from our Bear Tracks pattern. The mini finishes at 12", which is a good size for a little pillow. Here's Amanda's original mini quilt top:

The bear paw blocks are itty bitty! The blocks are 4" finished so those HSTs finish at 1"! Lots and lots of trimming later I had all of my HSTs ready:

Once the HSTs were done, it didn't take very long to get the blocks together and get the top done.

I layered the top with some scrap batting and leftover flannel and used my walking foot to do some simple straight line gridwork on the top. I also stitched around the perimeter of the top to make sure that everything stayed together during construction.

I used Amanda Jean's simple envelope back pillow tutorial as a guide for my pillow. I had a 12" pillow form and used the leftover flannel from the back of the quilt as the back of the pillow. I used a zig-zag stitch around final seam to finish. That way the pillow can be washed because goodness knows babies can make messes!

And ta-da! A little pillow to match a little quilt.

This was a fun and easy project and I can see why some people find pillows so addicting to make! Maybe I need to recover the pillows on my couch...

If you love bear paw blocks like I do, then check out the Bear Tracks pattern which includes the mini quilt pattern!

Happy Friday! I'm having a giveaway of the scraps left over from the project -- click here to see that post! Sharing at Finish it up Friday!

Finished Bear Tracks Baby Quilt

Another little finish is completed and sent off to its sweet little new owner!

I finished up my little Bear Tracks quilt (with a few modifications from the original pattern) this weekend and am so happy with how stinking cute it is!

I quilted it with curly daisies to help break up the very angular blocks. I used pink snuggle flannel on the back, and bound it with some pink leaf print fabric from my stash.

At 40 inches square, this is a perfect little snuggler for a little baby to cuddle in.

I love being able to make something sweet for all of the babies my friends are having! It seems like I always have at least one in progress all the time!

Stats:
Bear Tracks Baby Quilt
Pattern: adapted from Bear Tracks pattern by my sister
Fabric: fat quarter bundles from Joann from years and years ago
Backing: pink snuggle flannel
Quilting: free motion curly daisies
Size: 40 inches square

Sharing at Finish it up Friday!

Bear Tracks Quilt Top

I am excited to show off my version of the Bear Tracks quilt top!

I ended up having a lot of trouble adhering to the layout in the pattern because I am working with five different fabrics and only three different basic colors. So I did diagonal stripes of each color and mixed in some unpieced squares around the edges.

Here's the final quilt top:

And here's the original quilt for reference:

I don't have enough fabric to do the borders (I don't think) so I will be working on getting this quilted this weekend! Then it will be sent off to a sweet little lady named Penny!

Sharing at Sew Cute Tuesday!