We have been spending 2025 making a quilt each month to highlight one of our Then Came June patterns. And today, I am jumping straight to the middle of the year and sharing our June Make of the Month! (It is the only one that is finished so far.)
Our June Make of the Month was our Redford Quilt Pattern! We released this FREE quilt pattern last summer and June felt like the perfect month to jump back into it!
The Redford Quilt Pattern is my take on the traditional Bear Paw quilt block. Instead of using scraps, it’s written to use FQs and tiny sashing between the blocks without a cornerstone square (small square in the middle of blocks or sashing). The pattern includes instructions for a single Bear Paw Block as well as how to make an entire 25 block quilt using FQs.
Back in January when we were finishing up our samples for QuiltCon, we curated our Poolside Kit to make a Plot Twist Quilt. Well, I never got a chance to sew with this bundle because I was in cutting fabric hell and Alysson was sewing up a storm to get it done in time. (ha! joys of QuiltCon)
I’d been coveting this fabric bundle for months and really wanted to find a way to work with it but we didn’t need another Plot Twist in this exact fabric. That’s when I had the light bulb moment to use this bundle in our Redford Pattern!
The Redford Pattern has two different design options:
Using all FQs for the Bear Paws and background fabric with scrappy or solid sashing like below:
Or using FQs for the Bear Paws only and yardage for the background, with scrappy or solid sashing:
I decided that the easiest way to use this Poolside Kit for our Redford was to make the first option, all FQs. Here is my quilt math breakdown of how I am using the Poolside Kit:
The Poolside Kit includes (6) Solid Blue HYs for background. So I decided I’ll use (5) of the HYs and turn them into (10) FQs, each blue being used twice for a scrappy looking blue background. And the remaining (1) HY will become the HY required for the sashing (row sashing in between all the blocks).
Then, the Poolside Kit also includes (1) HY of accent fabric (the white and green grid fabric) and (18) FQs. Well, only (16) FQs are required for the Bear Paw Cuts. So I removed (2) FQs and that left me with the (16) needed for the Bear Paws. So what is left is (2) FQs and (1) HY. And thankfully, that is more than enough I need for the remaining sashing cuts of (5) 1/8 yards. Yes, I won’t have 5 different fabrics but I will use the combo of the 3 fabrics for the Bear Paw block sashing and be good to go!
Here is my visual break down below of the fabric:
The right side are the (16) FQs that will be my Bear Paw fabrics. The bottom (5) blue solids are my HYs that will turn into (10) FQs for the background. And then the top left stack will be my sashing fabrics.
I threw this idea into a mock up (some of these fabrics area little different than the bundle in real life but same vibes). Also, note that the sashing is a little different than what I wrote out above but it’s just the general idea I wanted to make sure would work.
After seeing that mock up, I said YEP! We are doing this! So we got to cutting.
It’s just a bunch of squares at this point. We saved our sashing cutting until we were ready for them.
And then we started the process of making our 400 (!!) HSTs needed for the full quilt. It’s a lot of HSTs. It’s a lot of trimming. But it’s so worth it and to help our mental sanity, we work on (50) HSTs at a time, and do two rounds to get to (100) HSTs before sewing them into their Bear Claws (1/4 of a full Bear Paw Block).
Once we have 100 HSTs ready to go, we started making Bear Claw piles. 100 HSTs = 25 Bear Claw sections. It’s a pretty quick process and we’ve found a good system to stay organized. I brought people along this process on Instagram, and I have every story saved into a Redford highlight.
Our only rule we followed when making our Bear Claws is that besides the natural pair of a HST, no fabrics repeat. The corner BQ square is a different blue than the 2 sets of HSTs. And the large Bear Paw square fabric is different than the Bear Paw fabric used in the HSTs.
We just threw these Bear Claws up on our design wall when they are done, no intentional lay out yet. We ended up being able to work through all 400 HSTs in one week and turned them into 100 Bear Claws. Here is where we stood before sewing them into finished Redford blocks.
IT IS LOOKING SO GOOD!!!! I am so so so excited that we used the Poolside Kit for this make. I love it so much.
From here, we took down all the Bear Claws and I photographed them.
I organized the Bear Claws by the large squares before deciding their final placements because I do not repeat the same large square fabric in a single Bear Paw block. And so this way, I put them on the table next to my design wall in their piles and work block by block.
Now you can see the final layout below. And you see the tiny little fabric strips? That is the sashing I decided to add to each block. I pinned one strip to each block to stay organized when sewing the sashing in each block.
I also decided to place the sashing intentionally in an echo pattern. It goes as follows:
Row 1: white, peach, green, peach, white
Row 2: peach, green, white, green, peach
Row 3: green, white, peach, white, green
Row 4: peach, green, white, green, peach
Row 5: white, peach, green, peach, white
From here, it was time to work block by block and slowly finish out all 25 Redford blocks!
You can see how the tiny sashing adds the perfect hit of additional color without it being too overpowering. I love the green on the white grid fabric and the bird fabric, it compliments the small spots of green in the floral fabrics of the Bear Paw fabrics. And now here are all 25 blocks done!
All that was left was cutting our final Blue HY for our row sashing and putting the top together! This came together quicker than I expected which is great because we were officially in summer and our schedules get very inconsistent with kids home, vacations, routines changing, etc.
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Can you see the sashing pattern now between all the rows? I always love to add a bit of order to an otherwise very chaotic and energetic quilt!
Alysson got this whole quilt top sewn together and my goodness is it not the best joyful happy quilt?!
I could not stop photographing this top. There are so many different fabrics and angles to capture. I had too good of a time photographing! ha.
I sent this off to Emily of So Sunny Quilts with a bright blue solid backing - Ruby and Bee Majorelle Blue. I knew I wanted a bold quilting design and thread choice. I landed on Ananda Clam Jam (we used it on this Redford quilt too!) and a bright pink shiny thread.
I bound the quilt in a bright pink solid and I small amount of the same black and white Fableism print on the right hand side. We also added a TCJ Meadow Star block label to the back to finish it off!
I love seeing the hot pink thread on the back paired with the bright pink fabric on the binding. It's a perfect pairing even on the back!
This quilt really does shout THEN CAME JUNE made this!! And I love that. I am so thrilled with how joyful and bright and oddly cohesive it turned out. I'm not sure what I'll do with this but maybe I'll eventually sell it?!
She is perfect. And for links here we go: