Finished: Vintage Bear Paw Quilt + Pattern

Happy Thursday! I am SO happy to share my latest quilt finish with you all! I present to you my finished Vintage Bear Paw Quilt!! I started this quilt back in Spring of 2019, so it's been a few years in the making!


I had a vision for this quilt when I first started it, but it honestly turned out better than the picture in my head. The only downside is I don't think it's true beauty shows up that well in photos. The contrast in places is so minimal and I think that's part of what makes it hard to capture. I love how soft it feels and looks.

I've written two pretty in depth posts about this quilt when it was in progress, which you can read here: Work in Progress: Vintage Sheet Bear Paw Quilt and Progress Check In: Vintage Sheet Bear Paw Quilt


This quilt is made entirely of reclaimed vintage bedsheets. Almost all of them came from thrift stores, but a few I found at antique stores, flea markets and couple on Etsy. One of my favorite things about my vintage sheet quilts is that quite a few of the fabrics in my collection have the memory of finding it attached. I also love being able to find/use the same print in multiple colors. I've been building my stash of sheets since 2006 or 2007? During the years that I sold vintage sheet fat quarters, I'd try to save a small piece of every different print that came through my doors. That allowed me to collect so many prints!

This design is pretty simple, it's really just a bear paw quilt block without any sashing or center squares! I used two colors in each block, using multiple fabrics for each color. I also coordinated the background fabrics for each block specially. A block that is orange and pink also has a white with orange background fabric and a white with pink background fabric.


I actually ended up making way too many blocks for this quilt, so I also made a baby quilt and a pillow, which I'll share soon! For the quilting, I kept things simple as usual. I did a combination of straight line quilting on the diagonal as well as vertically and horizontally.


I chose a really special sheet for the backing! This was one of the first sheet designs I thrifted and I fell in love with it right away. Lucky me I've thrifted a few more over the years and I happened to have this one tucked away that was the perfect size.


For the binding I ended up settling on this pink gingham. I would have loved to do a multi-colored stripe but didn't have enough of anything in my stash.


I remembered to add a label, again! I'm so pleased that I've been using these consistently again.


If you're interested in making a quilt like this too, I wrote up a pattern for it! (I promise I'm done releasing patterns for the year!!)

You can find the pattern for sale here: Vintage Bear Paw Quilt Pattern


The pattern features five sizes, including: Baby (40.5"x40.5"), Small Throw (54"x67.5"), Square (67.5"x67.5"), Large (67.5"x81"), Extra-Large (81"x94.5"). It's written for fat quarters but there are tables and instructions for cutting from scraps or other stash too. There are also coloring sheets for each quilt size so you can easily plan out your quilt!


My quilts made from vintage sheets are some of my very favorite, and I am looking forward to starting another one too! Perhaps not quite as long-term as this one turned out to be!

Happy Quilting!