"Beary" Special Quilt

    

      Bear - the nickname for a friend.  With his birthday coming up, it was time for me to put him on my list of quilt recipients.  I have been looking at Shannon Brinkley's awesome scrappy applique mosaic designs for a while. https://shannon-brinkley.com/ I took her online class, ordered the Scrappy Wild Animals pattern and was off!  Or so I thought.  This friend had just moved to the Denver area and faces the Flat Iron Mountains with the snow covered Rockies peaking out from behind.  I wanted to add mountains to the quilt with the bear - how perfect to represent my friend.  Doing what I always do, I spent a lot of time looking at pinterest for mountain  quilt ideas.   So many awesome ideas.  In the end, I decided to use my 60 degree equilateral triangle ruler to make the mountains and sky.  
     Since the Rockies sit behind the Flat Irons, I wanted the design to represent snow covered mountains sitting behind the closer mountains.  I selected fabrics in shades of grays so that the closer mountains were a darker color and the background mountains were a lighter color.  (When you can see mountain tops in layers, notice how the closer ones are darker and the further ones appear to be a lighter color.)  Then I wanted a layer of evergreens forming the tree line in transition down the mountain to the hilly terrain.   I cut trianges in 3.5 inches, 6.5 inches and 9.5 inches and began playing around with them.  I also had to cut some of the sky blue in smaller sections so the mountains would not form a row all of same height.  I would cut and move around and sew and ask my hubby and sister's opinion and keep rearranging.  Fortunately, the large dining room table was available.

This represents 3 and a half days of work!    










     The fabrics were all from Connecting Thread and were fat quarter collections that I already had in my stash.  The sky blue came from a local fabric store.

   
      Once I had the most tedious part completed,  I was excited to move on.  I sewed strips of 6.5 inches and 4.5 inches together to make the lowlands.  I was ready to sew the bottom and top together, but laid them out on the floor and called hubby to come do a quilt consult.  He took one look and said that will not do at all!  He began changing the proportions and he was exactly correct!  Because I had not drawn it out on paper first and was designing on the fly, I had totally missed the "rule of thirds".

 He got on the floor and began to shorten the brown "prairie" part and increase the sky part.  All his suggestions were spot on.  Then while I took out seams, he drove to 3 stores to find more of the blue fabric since I did not have enough to finish.  What a great quilt husband!


  The bear was surprisingly easy to make following Shannon's directions and using her recommended supplies. I rewatched her videos for her tips on zigzagging to connect the bear to the  quilt top.  As I watched her video lessons, I realized that even though I knew everything she was saying, her experience led to tips that I would have figured out, but maybe only after I had made simple mistakes.  The tips gave me a good product on the first try.

Once I had it together and was very pleased, there is the question of how to quilt it!

 The quilt husband really is a fan of stitch in the ditch only, but thought he might have some ideas.  Naw, he didn't, but I do frequently talk out a plan with him and enjoy his feedback.

I did free motion up and down the mountains to mimic the craggy look.  The trees got a simple back and forth motion.  Because the triangles leave a straight line, I added some applique trees in different sizes to break up the line between the trees and prairie.  Those I left unquilted for a little change of texture.  On the prairie, I did gently curves representing the hills at the base of the mountains.  Then added some free motion grass tufts.  For the sky I used some curves and swirls. 

  The plan for this quilt was to have a brown super soft and comfy Minky backing.  I personally do not like to intensely quilt Minky.  So I added a broadcloth backing for the quilting.   On another quilt someone else had done the same way, I noticed that when the quilt shrunk after washing (which they all do) the Minky backing did not shrink.  So the Minky was no longer smooth and a little larger than the front.  So, I decided to put a quick, one layer binding on the quilt and wash it BEFORE adding the Minky.

     After and overnight drying, we were ready for the backing.  I use spray adhesive for making my "quilt sandwich" but have discovered that it does not stick very well to the Minky which is polyester and has a knit like back.  So very carefully I laid out the Minky to make sure no wrinkles, then layered the top on and pinned to prevent shifting.  I took one stitch across the middle of the quilt.  Then took a few other straight across seams in the brown section.  I ran a stitch along the mountain range and one straight through the sky.  After completing those, the edges of the Minky were trimmed to 2 inches, then pulled to the front and used to self bind.
     This took one week of intense work, but the recipient was thrilled with it!