Snow Bear

This quilt started as experiment/exploration with an old collared shirt of mine that didn't feel good anymore. It technically might have "fit" but not in a comfortable way, and I felt stiff and uncomfortable and not myself when I wore it, like I was trying to put on a costume to be someone I'm not. It felt VERY good to cut it up! 

I started by hand piecing snowball blocks with the guidance of the a Snowball quilts workshop on the Quilty Nook hosted by Maura Ambrose:

Those blocks sat for a while before becoming a quilt, though - when I first made them, I didn’t have a specific idea in mind, was just playing with the hand piecing and the fabrics. Over about a year, I made several more blocks and tried many different layouts with just the snowball blocks and couldn't find a layout that felt good.

Then one day I was swimming laps and had this inspiration to combine another of my favorite traditional quilt blocks, the bear paw, with the snow ball blocks, and all of a sudden this new playful direction opened up, and with a bunch of machine piecing tiny HSTs and moving bits and pieces around, I created the top, titled Snow Bear because of the mix of block inspirations:

I quilted with some found 5wt pearl cotton, (I can't remember where I found it but it must have been from someone else's collection at some point :)) and used up almost every bit of what I had, which is very satisfying not to have a messy ball of thread hanging around anymore!

I love how thick the thread is, but I may pause before jumping in to another 5wt quilting project too soon, I'm finding it very hard on my hand and wrist - though I did finally figure out how to properly use a thread puller, which helped a lot towards the end!

One thing I'm noticing is that the final form of the quilt has a stiffness that the original hand pieced blocks didn't. The hand pieced blocks felt so free and loose, and the final piece feels more tight and zipped up. That's not necessarily something negative, just something I'm noticing about how it feels, and maybe something to play with in future pieces.