We have a new FREE Quilt Pattern available - the Redford Quilt! The Redford Quilt is my spin on the traditional Bear Paw design that highlights Fat Quarters and tiny sashing!
The Redford Quilt Pattern is written to make an appx 70" x 70" quilt top, using 25 Bear Paw Blocks and tiny sashing to construct it. The pattern has information on how to use FQs for the background of the top OR yardage, as well as scrappy or solid sashing choices.
And before we dive in, I named this pattern after my dog, Redford. He reminds me of a goofy, silly, teddy bear stuffed animal (he is an Australian Labradoodle) and it felt fitting to name a Bear Paw quilt after him. Also, the Peanut Butter pattern is named after Alysson's dog, so I of course had to name my next free pattern after my own dog. Here is a picture of both of our doggos as puppies a few years ago. Peanut Butter is on the left and Redford is on the right.
Okay, let's get to this Redford Quilt! When using all FQs for the Redford Quilt you will need 10 FQs for the background cuts and 16 FQs for the Bear Paw cuts. And the sashing is extra but I'll get to that in a bit. So you need a total of 26 FQs for this quilt top and you know what has 26 FQs in it? The adorable new line by Kim Kight called Picture Book.
The line is inspired by kid's picture books and it has strawberries, elephants, game board designs, tiny florals and more. It is ADORABLE. And I thought for such a happy, joyful fabric collection, it would be perfect to highlight it in our Redford Quilt.
Now, because it's a collection of all prints, I knew I needed to give the colors and fabric a bit of structure and purpose in the design so it wouldn't read TOO crazy. I love me some chaos. I love playing with a lot of things going on at once BUT then making sure I add an element of calm, or an element of structure to help control it. I decided to group the blue FQs (10 of them) as the background fabric and the remaining 16 FQs became the Bear Paw cuts - all the oranges, golds, pinks, purples and neutrals.
No matter what, this quilt was going to be scrappy and busy but filled with love and joy and extra cute fabrics. At this point, I felt only slightly hesitant to dive in so I did make a quick mock up in Illustrator to make sure I wasn't totally off my rocker.
Disregard the sashing colors in the mock up, I just plugged some ideas in but I felt like "okay, this still may be wild but I kinda love it". And with that, I started cutting out the fabric!
All the Bear Paw cuts are on the left and the Background cuts on the right. And you can see the small amount of scraps left from the FQs at the top.
And now, it is time to make 400 HSTs. And yes, 400 is a lot but also you can chain piece or work in batches. The Redford quilt is meant to feel scrappy without using scraps. For me, I decided to work in 4 rounds of 100 HSTs at a time. This way, I was able to make sure I was evenly distributing the Bear Paw and BG cuts together and only have to worry about trimming 100 at a time. And after each 100 HSTs, I would then make 25 Bear Claws (the 4 smaller units to an entire Bear Paw block).
I didn't add any sashing choices until all of my Bear Claw blocks were finished. At this point, I referred to my original mock up but I didn't like the greens I had used in real life. So I picked fabrics I thought looked like a fun compliment to this design and I made sure they were all solids. I thought the addition of solids would add a nice moment of calm. The colors I chose are as follows:
These are all Bella Solids - Dusty Jade, Cotton Candy, Caramel, Periwinkle, Honeysuckle and Citrine.
For scrappy sashing, you can choose 5 different colors for the block sashing - 5 colors = 5 blocks per color. And then the 6th color is the main quilt sashing between the blocks. I made one block in each sashing color to confirm that my color division of blue for backgrounds and the other colors for the Bear Paws worked and I'd say it does!
I loved how all of these blocks turned out and all together they do give off a structure of color consistency even if there is a lot of variety in the fabrics and colors themselves. Here are all 25 blocks stacked in the sashing groups.
Now here are all the blocks laid out a little more to see the variety in the blocks.
After all my blocks were finished, I finalized my lay out on my design wall and then started adding the quilt sashing and assembling the top in rows.
Finishing this quilt top was very satisfying. The small sashing does make it more tedious to sew together but I think that adds to the sense of accomplishment.
I sent this Redford Quilt off to Emily of So Sunny Quilts and we choose a really fun new pantograph called Hippy. It has a bounce to it and a sort of soft vibrating floral design. We also picked a shiny soft blue thread. The texture is so fun and adds another touch of whimsy to an already precious and adorable quilt.
We bound the quilt top in Bella Electric Lemon and backed it in a hot pink solid that I don't remember the name!
Midphoto shoot break to show you Redford watching me taking photos.
