baby quilt – Blue Bear Quilts

Posted on February 14, 2020April 29, 2021 by Reed — Leave a comment

Patterns Designed For Accuquilt

Over the years, we have created a number of patterns for Accuquilt. I thought it would be fun to share them all in a post. They are all available on their website as a free download. The patterns on their website may be found here: https://www.accuquilt.com/patterns.html

The first pattern that we created for Accuquilt was Hexagon Illusions and it was made by cutting larger hexagons from an ombre fabric and then cutting smaller hexagons from the same section of the fabric and rotating them 180 degrees and appliquéing them onto the larger hexagons.

Elephant Cuddles was the next pattern and it was made from Minky.

Holiday Northwoods Medley Placemats are created with a reverse appliqué technique.

Lilac Table Topper uses the die that cuts perfect 1″ finished squares.

Fall Frolic Table Runner was made with beautiful Jinny Beyers Denim fabric from RJR Fabrics.

Cleapatra’s Garden Gate featured the Cleapatra’s Fan die.

Cleopatra's Garden Gate — Cleopatra’s Garden Gate

Have you ever heard of crumb quilting? That was the technique used in Spring Medley Mug Rugs. You sew small scraps of fabric together and then apply fusible webbing before cutting out the appliqué shapes on the die. Accuquilt also supplies the embroidery files as a free download on their website.

Fun at Sea Life Medley is a great quilt pattern for showcasing your appliqué shapes.

With that same die, we also created Storm at Sea Life Medley.

Antique Americana was made using the very versatile Hattie’s Choice die. This patriotic quilt is perfect for the 4th of July, Veteran’s Day or a Quilt of Valor.

A perfect quilt for a hot summer day would be Orange Cream Soda. It features the Studio Setting Triangles dies.

A modern take on the Glorified Nine Patch block resulted in Sherbet Dreams.

Fall is Coming is a great quilt for fall which uses Kimberly Einmo’s Solidish Fabrics from Timeless Treasures Fabrics.

Love Letters also used Kimberly Einmo’s Solidish Fabrics from Timeless Treasures Fabrics. This would be a great Valentines quilt.

In the mood to create something scary? Then you might want to make the Boo! Halloween Medley Table Runner.

Boo Halloween Table Runner — Boo! Halloween Table Runner

Ahoy Mate and Let’s Go Sailing were created using the GO! Nautical Medley die and is the perfect pattern and die for all of you water lovers.

The Retro Twist Wall Hanging was made with the Starry Path die. This is the perfect wall hanging for your mid century modern home.

The Go! Yuletide Gnome Wall Hanging is a great decoration to make for the holidays. Who doesn’t love a little gnome?

Your kids will love the Deco Dino Table Runner.

Stay tuned for more fun and inspiring designs we create for Accuquilt.

Posted on February 14, 2020February 14, 2020 by Reed — 1 Comment

Tutorial For Sewing the Accuquilt Hattie’s Choice Block

We have a pattern on our website called Fit For a King and we also designed the pattern called Antique Americana on the Accuquilt website, so I thought it might be fun to do a tutorial for sewing this block. Here are photos of those two quilts.

Here is what the Accuquilt Die looks like.

The die has three shapes on it labeled A, B & C. Now at first glance, you may think that shape “A” is an equilateral triangle, and the die packaging would lead you to believe that it is an equilateral triangle, but it is not. When piecing this shape, there is a correct orientation for laying it out and piecing it.

Look at one of the shape A’s laid over another one, as in the photo below, and you can see that they are not the same on all sides.

There is a distinct orientation for correctly piecing shape “A.” You need to identify the top of Shape” A and stack them all with the top on top.

The next photo shows the correct orientation of shape A on the right side of the shape B Diamond. You flip shape A over to the left on top of shape B per the photo below. Notice the orientation of shape A on top of shape B for sewing.

It helps if you sew with leaders and enders. These are scraps of fabric you start sewing on before sewing on your quilt pieces and stop on after you have sewn your chain of quilt pieces. This prevents the corners of your pieces from getting jammed down in the feed dogs. This next picture shows the 1/4″ seam sewn. Notice how the seam starts on the top point and ends by going through the bottom point.

Next press the seam toward the triangle.

Place another shape A onto the B diamond. Notice the orientation of the top on shape A.

Look at the 1/4″ seam below. Notice how the it starts at the top point and ends by going through the bottom point.

Press toward second shape A. Second photo is view from the back. Make 4 of these combined units.

Layout these combine units with shape Cs to the left of them.

Flip the combined units onto shape C as depicted below. Note how they are sewn from point to point.

Press toward shape C. View from the back. Make 4 of these units.

Lay out the 4 units per the photo below.

Place one of the units on top of another and sew along the right edge with a 1/4 ” seam. Second photo below is view of seam from back.

combined units showing 1/4" seam — combined units showing 1/4″ seam

Press seam toward shape C.

Lay out two half units.

Flip one half unit onto the other and pin where the diamonds intersect. Note the 1/4″ seam line in the second photo.

1/4" seam on half units — 1/4″ seam on half units

Press the center seam open.

Voila! You have a completed Hattie’s Choice block. In a perfect world, these blocks would measure 8.5″, but you can see that mine are only 8.25.” This will be fine as long as all of your blocks are consistently the same measurement.

Posted on October 15, 2019 by Reed — Leave a comment

New Patterns Aplenty

It has been a busy summer at Blue Bear Quilts. We taught our Pixie Party Quilt and Quilt in a Day’s Autumn Leaves table runner, in August, at Affinity For Quilts in White Bear Lake Minnesota. Everyone had a great time and some beautiful quilts are in the making.

While we were in Minnesota, we ran into the editors from one of our favorite magazines. Quilt Folk. They were kind enough to pose for a photo. If you have not discovered this magazine, you need to. It has gorgeous pictures of quilts on premium matte paper and really interesting articles about everything Quilt Folk might be involved in. We also went to the Great Minnesota Stae Fair and I had to have photo with my favorite lumberjack, Paul Bunyan.

We had a couple more of our quilt designs show up in magazines. Canoe Junction made the cover of the September/ October issue of Love of Quilting magazine. It uses Flower Garden Gatherings Fabrics from Moda. Winter Visitor is featured in the November/ December issue of McCall’s Quilting magazine. It uses the Cardinal Woods flannel collection from Northcott Fabrics.

Speaking of lumberjacks, don’t forget about our Quilt Cruise to Alaska’s Inside Passage June 6-13, 2020 aboard the Holland America Eurodam. We will be making the beautiful Northern Star Garden Quilt, a pattern that was designed exclusively for this cruise. It involves shapes that have been precut for you with Accuquilt, a no tear-out the paper, paper pieced center star and Hawaiian (should be called Alaskan) appliqué snowflakes in the border. A different technique for each day were are quilting, while the ship is at sea. When the ship is at sea, it is up to you as to how much time you want to spend sewing. When the ship is in port, you will be able to go into the the ports of Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka and Victoria, BC with your family and friends. This is a trip of a lifetime to one of the most beautiful places on Earth. The trip is over half full, so don’t miss out and sign up today. Here is the link if you are interested in joining us on this cruise. https://quiltretreatatsea.com/quiltinginthewild/

We have created some wonderful free patterns for Accuquilt, which we hope you will enjoy making. They all were designed with Timeless Treasures Fabrics. Speaking of which, we have several new patterns, which will be making their debut at Fall Quilt Market for Timeless Treasures Fabrics. More to come on these patterns at a later date. A couple of them do involve panels, however. The first Accuquilt pattern is Antique Americana, which involves the use of the Hattie’s Choice die. Here is the link for the pattern. https://www.accuquilt.com/go-antique-americana-throw-quilt-pattern.html Then, we have Orange Cream Soda which involved the use of the Studio 6″ setting triangles. Here is the link for that pattern. https://www.accuquilt.com/studio-orange-cream-soda-throw-quilt-pattern.html Sherbet Dreams involves the use of the Glorified Nine Patch die. Here is the link. https://www.accuquilt.com/go-sherbet-dreams-throw-quilt-pattern.html Love Letters uses the Studio 8″ setting triangles. Here is the link for Love Letters. https://www.accuquilt.com/studio-love-letters-throw-quilt-pattern.html And finally, Fall is Coming, which uses the Studio 8″ setting triangles. The link to Fall is Coming. https://www.accuquilt.com/studio-fall-is-coming-throw-quilt-pattern.html

Last, but certainly not least, we have two new patterns making their debut with QT Fabrics at Quilt Market, In Houston, October 2019. They are Fit For a King, which utilizes the Accuquilt Hattie’s Choice die and Kings and Queens. You will be able to purchase these patterns from QT Fabrics, if you are a quilt shop and also from our website, very soon. Fit for a King uses QT Fabrics basic lines, Quilting Illusions and Color Blends. Kings and Queens uses a fat quarter bundle from QT Fabrics Illuminations collection, which will be arriving in shops around April 2020. Kings and Queens pattern is perfect for those fat quarter bundles you would love to turn into a beautiful quilt.

Well, that’s it for now. Happy Quilting till we come back and share more of what’s happening at Blue Bear Quilts.

Posted on July 12, 2019July 12, 2019 by Reed — Leave a comment

Magazine Quilts Galore

Before we get to the magazine quilts, I have to tell you about an exciting discovery that I found. I was perusing the WWW.Accuquilt.com website and i did a search for embroidery patterns. What I discovered was that they have added many new free embroidery downloads for their older dies. We have two patterns that utilize Accuquilt appliqué shapes and now you can download the embroidery files for free, which will make doing the appliqué on these quilts so much easier. This is so exciting! They now have embroidery files for GO! Baby Baby, which has the bear and a duck and GO! Lullaby, which contains the sheep. Here is what they look like all stitched out in the satin stitch. The embroidery files also contain the blanket stitch and a motif stitch.

Here are the two Blue Bear Quilt patterns that use these Accuquilt dies: Dancing with Bears and Where R Ewe?, which are available on our website.

We have had several of our quilts appear in magazines recently. The first was Grandmother’s Garden, made with McKenna Ryan’s batiks in her Seed to Blossom line for Hoffman. This quilt appeared in the May/June 2019 issue of Love of Quilting magazine. The beautiful quilting was done at the Florida Quilting Center and I have included a close up photo of the quilting.

quilting on Mother's Garden — quilting on Mother’s Garden

The next quilt was Addie’s Garden, named after my great niece, appearing in the July/August 2019 issue of McCall’s Quilting magazine. It was made with gorgeous fabrics from the QT Fabrics Adeline line.

The third quilt was called Grandmother’s Garden, appearing in the July/ August 2019 issue of Love of Quilting. It featured fabric from Moda’s Morris Garden line.

We have been very busy creating new quilt designs for Accuquilt and these patterns are available as free downloads on their website. They have a die for making the Cleopatra’s Fan and our quilt pattern is called Cleo’s Garden Gate.

We also created cute mug rug rugs called Spring Medley Mug Rugs.

Finally, for Accuquilt, we created the packaging pattern for their Sea Life Medley die. The pattern included on the package is Fun at Sea Life Medley. We created a second pattern for that die called Storm at Sea Life Medley.

We have some beautiful wooden and acrylic seam rippers for sale on our website. These were created by the husband of one of our students and they are a delight to look at and hold. They take the drudgery out of ripping.

One last thing, we are leading a quilting cruise to Alaska’s Inside Passage on June 6-13, 2020. It is aboard the Holland America Eurodam and departs and returns to that great city in the Pacific Northwest of Seattle. There are quilt shops in every port and we quilt while the ship is at sea so you don’t miss out on any of the fun in the ports. Our sponsor for the cruise is Happy Apple Quilts. Their website is located at www.happyapplequilts.com Please mention that they referred you when registering. The project that we will be working on is called Northern Star Garden. It will involve 3 different techniques: piecing with Accuquilt cut shapes, no fear paper piecing and Hawaiian appliqué. Janome sewing machines and kits will be provided with fantastic fabrics from QT Fabrics.

Quilt Cruise project- Northern Star Garden

Posted on May 9, 2018 by Reed — Leave a comment

Secret Sewing Projects

At Blue Bear Quilts, we have been very busy getting ready for the summer 2018 classes. We also have been working on some secret sewing projects for Accuquilt that we can’t wait to share with you. We also have been designing patterns with QT Fabrics. Hopefully, we will be able to share these projects with you very soon.

Here are some of the exciting classes that we have coming up this summer. We will be offering a Triaxial Weave Pillow at Keep Me in Stitches on May 22& 29 in Tampa and July 12 & 19 in Largo. This is a weaving project that has little sewing and offers many creative ideas to incorporate into your sewing projects like garments, bags, and quilts.

We have an exciting Electric Quilt 8/ Accuquilt Event coming up at Keep Me in Stitches on May 25 & 26 in Tampa, and June 22 &23 in Largo. In this two-day event, you will learn the basic functions of EQ8 and learn how to create the “In the Jungle” quilt in EQ8 incorporating Accuquilt die shapes. The second day, we will cut out the quilt pieces using an Accuquilt cutter and die and sew the quilt together.

Finally, at Keep Me in Stitches, we have an Accuquilt party called “Patriotic Windings Ways,” perfect for the 4th of July, on June 8 & 9, in Largo, and June 15 & 16 in Tampa; a 3D Pinwheel Serger Blanket for the Baby Lock Serger Club, and the Bright Hope Quilt, in Tampa, on June 7 & 14th, and, in Largo, on August 20 & 27th.

At Happy Apple Quilts, We are offering “Hawaiian Stars” on May 31st and “Box of Chocolate Covered Cherries” on June 28th.

Country Quilts and Bears in Clearwater will have two offerings this summer. The first is our Accuquilt block contest fan favorite, “Not Your Grandmother’s Flower Garden” on May 23 & 30 and then “Water Wheel,” on July 14th, A Quilt in a Day Pattern.

At Bear Patch Quilting Company in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, on August 8th, we will be teaching a Quilt in a Day pattern called “Kylee’s Kite,” which we have put a modern spin on it with black and white fabrics and lots of geometric quilting.

Finally here are some photos from classes that we held this last session: Zippered serger pouch, Wonky Heart Pillow, Hawaiian Stars, and Snapshots Quilt.