In January, Dana started a scrappy bear paw quilt-along on Instagram.  I love making bear paws blocks and had a stack of fabric that I had set aside for myself ages ago.  It was a mix of old fabrics that I had been saving just for me, along with new prints that caught my eye.  Once I saw Dana's quilt a-long, I knew I had to get started right away.

I gave one paw in each block an accent paw.  In the end, it turned out to be a sampler quilt hidden in a bear paw quilt and I absolutely love it.  As soon as it was finished I had it on the bed.

The border is the Paris map print by three sisters for Moda.  It's from years ago but I squirreled away yards of it because it is one of my most favorite prints.  It was my jumping off point for the prints for the rest of the quilt.  Basically, all my favorite colors, which are mostly sort of non-colors.

One of my favorite bits is the binding.  In with one of my favorite text prints, I added sections of a black print from the first fat quarter bundle I ever purchased back in 1997.  It is a Moda print and I still love it today as much as I did back then.

The back of the quilt is a lovely black print on double wide fabric with some grey around the edges.

A friend quilted it for me on her long arm.  The quilting pattern was called bayside.  I'm sure they were going for waves, but to me it looked like thick curly bear fur so I had to try it.

She did an amazing job and I'm thrilled with how it turned out.

I didn't plan to make a postage stamp quilt, but it seems that's what I ended up doing. I knew I wanted to do a black and white quilt.  I already had a great mix of black & white and black & off white geometrics.

I knew I wanted to bind it in a bright color and this blue jumped out at me from the shelf.

I started out by cutting 4 1/2" squares, but they were too big for what I had in mind.  I ended up cutting each of them into quarters.  I loved the look until I started to stitch them up - all those little corners to match up.  I randomly stitched blue corners on some of the blocks just to add a little color.  I was afraid I was going to run out of blocks so I decided to add the blue cross to use up some space.  I'm so glad I did.  I think it makes the quilt top much more interesting.

I didn't have a plan for the back until I was wondering around the shop with the blue under my arm and spotted Kate Spain's Central Park line.

It's machine quilted with an old gold thread.

I didn't want it to be too  structured since the blocks were already arranged in a strong grid.  I decided to go with a wandering diagonal.  I didn't use guides so that the stitching lines would have a bit of flow to them.

It's listed for sale over at etsy and big cartel.