Friday 20 May 2011

Amish Bear's Paw Quilt

Over the last few weeks I have been working on a new Amish quilt for my Amish Club. 
This month we have been looking at one block quilts that were popular in the Mid-Western Amish communities. I have always wanted to do a Bear's Paw quilt having made one block in my second ever quilt - a Sampler Quilt - way back in the 1980s.

This is a photo of the quilt partially hand quilted - not  a great photo but it gives you an idea.


I was going to put black where the grey/blue is but decided this would be a lot of black to 
quilt with black quilting thread at night! And all my quilting is done at nights. Black is the traditional thread to quilt with no matter what colour fabric you are going up and over. It certainly makes you take more care when the quilting stitches are going to be so obvious.

I am hand quilting it as you should do to an Amish quilt. 
The solid blocks are quilted like this - parallel lines 3/4" apart - marked with masking tape.


And the Bear's Paw blocks like this - well it is not quite quilted all over yet. 
These lines are 1/2" apart.


I seem to have my quilting fingers in so many pots at the moment with the groups that I run at the shop. I  go from Reproduction to Amish to Arty and then squeeze in my Japanese passion. I  really must get onto another Japanese block!!!!


2 comments:

  1. Wow, that is just lovely Robyn. I love Amish and have only made one - it's my nod to the skills of those women. At 100" square I used 36 different coloured homespun, each block a stand alone colour on black. I wish I had been as wise as you and used a lighter colour.
    hugs
    Miche'le

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  2. Hmm.. this one could be difficult!

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