Bjorn Bear

Hi All! I guess I took a little break from blogging. Didn't mean to, but time flies. And I have been sewing as usual, so I have a few new quilts to share over the next couple of weeks.

First up today is Bjorn Bear, a pattern by Elizabeth Hartman. You've probably seen tons of these as the pattern's been out for quite some time. I have a husband who is a bit obsessed with bears for some reason and I've been thinking about making this one for a while. What stopped me was all those pieces! Each block has many different sized pieces and I thought it would be a tedious, slow quilt to make. So I finally decided to make a small version and was so surprised at how quickly it came together.

I actually loved making each of these blocks! I'm not sure why, but each bear seems to have some sort of "personality" that was fun to see emerge. Gotta love this guy with the glasses.

I had a quarter yard of Cotton + Steel's bear fabric and had to find a way to add it to the back. I framed it in black and set it into a solid aqua fabric.

It took me a while to figure out how to quilt it. I ended up stippling the gray background, wavy quilting each bear with matching-colored thread, and doing some back and forth quilting on the white muzzle. I didn't do any quilting over the black as I was afraid it would be distracting.

Needless to say, my husband loves this quilt, but it is much too small for him! I plan on giving it to the grandkids this Summer, but I may have a fight on my hands :)