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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.

Pixie Party Class
Pixie Party Class
Autumn Leaves Table Runner
Autumn Leaves Table Runner

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.

Quilt Folk magazine
Quilt Folk magazine
Paul Bunyan
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.

Canoe Junction
Canoe Junction
Canoe Junction in Love of Quilting
Canoe Junction in Love of Quilting
Winter Visitor
Winter Visitor

 

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/

Quilt Cruise to Alaska
Quilt Cruise to Alaska
Alaskan beauty in fabric
Alaskan beauty in fabric
Northern Star Garden
Northern Star Garden

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

 

Antique Americana
Antique Americana
Orange Cream Soda
Orange Cream Soda
Sherbet Dreams
Sherbet Dreams
Love Letters
Love Letters

 

 

Fall is Coming
Fall is Coming

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.

Fit For a King
Fit For a King
Kings and Queens
Kings and Queens

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

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Magazine Quilts Galore

Mother's Garden Quilt

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.

emb. sheep satin stitch
emb. sheep satin stitch
emb. bear satin stitch
emb. bear satin 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.

Dancing Bears Quilt Pattern
Dancing Bears Quilt Pattern
Where R Ewe Quilt Pattern
Where R Ewe Quilt Pattern

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.

May/June 2019 Love of Quilting
May/June 2019 Love of Quilting
Mother's Garden Quilt
Mother’s Garden Quilt
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.

Addie's Garden
Addie’s Garden. July/August issue of McCall’s Quilting magazine

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.

Grandmother's Garden
Grandmother’s Garden. July/August issue of Love of Quilting

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.

Cleo's Garden Gate
Cleo’s Garden Gate

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

Spring Medley Mug Rugs
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.

Fun at Sea Life Medley Quilt
Fun at Sea Life Medley Quilt
Storm at Sea Life Medley Quilt
Storm at Sea Life Medley Quilt

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.

Wooden Seam Rippers
Wooden Seam Rippers
Acrylic Seam Rippers
Acrylic Seam Rippers

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.

Alaska Quilt Cruise June 6-13, 2020
Alaska Quilt Cruise June 6-13, 2020
Quilt Cruise project- Northern Star Garden
Quilt Cruise project- Northern Star Garden