Taming my Quilters Color Quest Bear Paw Blocks

In my previous post I shared a photo of all 60 of my Quilter’s Color Quest Bear Paw blocks up on my design wall. After three days of walking past them and looking back at the photo I picked out two blocks that weren’t quite working for me.

The problem was the lack of contrast between the spotty fabric used for the claws and the unbleached calico background. I discarded one of the two blocks, reworking the other with darker ‘claws’.

There are a couple of other blocks struggling with low level contrast but I can live with those.

I’ve been playing around with layout options using EQ7. Keeping the blocks on point in a 5 across and 7 down layout uses 59 blocks. Handy as that’s how many blocks I now have! Serendipity and all that 😉

Narrow sashing between blocks is the way I’ve decided to go. The extra fabric brings the quilt top to a useful 50″ x 70″ size and, as Rebecca pointed out in her comment, using sashing gets rid of the problem of have to match seams 🙂 I did play with the idea of coloured sashing and/or coloured setting triangles but I think there’s enough going on, what with the scrappy nature of the Bear Paws, without adding more patterns for eye and brain to negotiate!

This morning, after re-working the low contrast block, I cut lots of 1¼” strips from the left-over calico background. Now I’m in the middle of stitching the Bear Paw blocks to the long strips – as many as will fit on each one.

I’ve used this method of speedy piecing to make Log Cabin blocks – it’s very satisfying. Just be sure to orientate the blocks the same way as each other when laying them on the strips to stitch… Ask me how I know! 😉

Linking with Alycia for Finished or Not Friday.

Allison