The Redford Quilt Pattern is a FREE quilt pattern we released this past summer! Redford is our modern take on the traditional Bear Paw design that utilizes fat quarters and tiny sashing! Download the Redford Quilt pattern here.
Before I jump into sharing today's quilt, I have our Picture Book Redford Quilt already up on the blog. Head there for more inspiration!
Okay, onto my first Redford quilt. We called our Fat Quarter cabinet in our studio, Betty. Betty Blue. She is an old postal office mail sorting cabinet and I love her.
Betty can hold thousands of FQs and we keep her rainbow organized. Alysson, Christy and I love her so much that at times, I have to give us time limits when organizing and adding new FQs. Betty has a rainbow color trance power over anyone who looks at her. Time slows, you just want to play and move fabrics around and suddenly it's two hours later. And of course that happens, it's like a quilter's candy shop!
In June, Betty was full of new fabrics and I had an itch to create something new for fun. I wanted to try sewing a traditional quilt block I hadn't ever made before but could put my own spin on it. I chose the Bear Paw quilt block.
Most Bear Paw blocks I've seen are made using scraps and have a cornerstone in the center of the block with sashing typically 1"-2.5" wide. I wanted all the variety of using scraps without actually using scraps so I decided to see if I could make a design using FQs instead - both for the background fabrics and the main bear paw fabrics. Also, I wasn't sure how I wanted the blocks to come together with or without sashing but decided to dive in before knowing and just wing it!
And this is where having Betty organized by color and full of gorgeous FQs is such a gift. I just started pulling fabrics that I thought were fun and let the bundle build itself!
I had done some chicken scratch math to see how many FQs I would need. The background FQs require just two different cuts - the very corner square of the Bear Claw unit and squares for the HSTs we create. The Bear Paw FQs require the larger Bear Claw square and square for the HSTs. The Redford Quilt Pattern is written to make a 25 block quilt that finishes at appx 71" square. For the FQ only option, you need 16 FQs for the Bear Paws and 10 FQs for the background. Additionally, you need a little bit of yardage for the tiny sashing within the blocks and in the overall quilt construction.
From the photo above, you can see my stack of 16 FQs to the left will be my main Bear Paw fabrics and the 10 FQs to the right as my background fabrics. I went with a "low volume" inspired background pull but as you can see, there is still a lot of variety and color, not just muted subtle fabrics.
Before I cut all of my FQs, I did make a single test Bear Claw from scraps to make sure I liked the size of my HSTs and overall cuts. And once I felt good about that, then I committed and cut out all of my fabrics and laid them out in piles between Bear Paw cuts and background cuts.
I would work Bear Claw by Bear Claw and pull 10-15 of these combos at one time to chain piece the HSTs. The only thing I tried to do was make sure the BG and the Bear Paw fabrics didn't repeat within a single Bear Claw (beyond making 2 HSTs that will be the same). So that means you will have 3 different fabrics from each set - 3 different BG fabrics and 3 different Bear Paw fabrics in a single Bear Claw.
For 25 Redford Blocks, you need 4 Bear Claws which means a total of 100 Bear Claws. And each Bear Claw requires 4 HSTs, so it's a total of 400 HSTs. And yes, that is a lot and yes, you do need to trim them. But, this type of sewing can be so meditative and fun and easy to jump in and out of. I really enjoyed the process but by the end, I was tired of HSTs. ha!
Once all my Bear Claws were ready, it was time for me to figure out how I wanted to assemble them. I laid some of them out on my design wall (just a piece of batting hung on a wall) and ended up really liking them laid out in the traditional way of 4 claws together.
I decided I didn't want a cornerstone in the middle of the block and I wanted thinner sashing that ones I had seen online. I decided on cutting the sashing at 7/8" so it would finish at 3/8" wide. That is tiny! But does it have such impact.
Now that I could visualize what the Redford block would look like, I had to decide what fabrics to use for sashing. I knew I wanted multiple sashing colors within the blocks and possibly a different sashing fabric for all between the blocks/rows. I decided to use 5 different fabrics for the blocks themselves - 5 fabrics = 5 blocks per fabric.
I auditioned lots of different fabrics but ended up landing on these 6 fabrics - 5 for the block sashing and 1 for the main quilt top sashing.
And at this point, I made my way through the top block by block and added sashing.
I have the blocks stacked by their sashing color and it is such a fun way to see the consistency I did build into this design, even though it has a very varied and slightly chaotic look to it overall.
When I took these blocks back down to my design wall, I only prioritized one thing - making sure there was 1 color sashing in a single column and single row. I wanted to be sure the sashing colors were spaced out and not clumped together.
Once I felt happy with the layout, it was time to add the sashing in between the blocks in each row and then sashing to the rows and finally sew it all together!
Using pins is really helpful when sewing this all together to keep the tiny sashing lined up properly. But other than that, it isn't a complicated sew. I LOVE how it turned out.
The quilt sat untouched with MANY other quilts we made during an incredibly prolific spring and summer quilting season. And finally at the end of summer, I sent this off for longarm quilting to Emily of So Sunny Quilts. I chose a pantograph called the Ananda Clam Jam and the texture is perfect. And we went with neon green thread for another bright punch of joy!
I backed the quilt in Bella Geranium which is a punchy red coral and then I bound it in this really funky red/pink/green swiggle print. It's a louder print that I usually buy but it is perfect for this quilt!
Another thing to note about building these Redford blocks is that I made sure the 4 large squares in the claws were from different fabrics. If some of the HST prints repeated in a single block, I was fine with that. But if the large square repeated, I feel like it would draw the eye too much and be distracting.
This was our first Redford Quilt, and then we made our Picture Book Redford quilt and next up is our third one called Citrine Dreams. In Citrine Dreams, we used yardage for background and all the same fabric for sashing - both of these options are also provided in the Redford Quilt pattern.
