It’s finally time to meet the Red Bear of New Beginnings! Welcome to the Beary Colourful BOM!

Happy New Year!!!! May 2018 be full of blessings and peace and success for you!

Today is the day! A new year. New goals. And the first episode in two intertwined projects that will run all year. The 2018 Monthly Color Challenge and the Beary Colourful Quilt BOM.

I have been looking forward to this day for several months. This project is all thanks to Jen Shaffer of Patterns by Jen. For each month of 2018, Jen has chosen a colour and is releasing a pattern for a pieced block in that colour. Over the 12 months there will be 12 blocks in 12 colours to produce a rainbow quilt. The first block for Jen Shaffer’s quilt is available for free at Jen’s blog right now. This is the first block that you can download from Patterns with Jen:

How the Monthly Color Challenge will work

Jen has invited a small group of bloggers to help with her 2018 Monthly Color Challenge. So at the beginning of each month, there will be a blog hop to inspire you with different projects in the allocated colour. This month, to start things off, there are six other bloggers participating in the Red Challenge Blog Hop. There is myself – I will get to what we are doing for the challenge here at Clever Chameleon in a moment. And then there are five other fabulous quilters.

The other Red Challenge Bloggers for January 2018 are:
Jen Strauser at the Dizzy Quilter
Sherry Shish at Powered by Quilting
Jen Rosin at A Dream and A Stitch
Nancy Scott at Masterpiece Quilting
Joanne Harris at Quilts by Joanne

And at the end of each month….. there are prizes!

Not only has Jen put together a free rainbow BOM for you, and lined up half a dozen other quilters to help inspire you, but she has organised prizes as well!!

Every month, in the last week of the month, Patterns by Jen will have a linky party especially for people who have participated in the monthly colour challenge. You can link up one project per month in the colour of the month. Your link can be Jen’s block, something you have made from one of the other Challenge Blog Hop participants or something completely original. As long as your creation is made predominantly in the nominated colour. You can participate in as many or as few of the monthly parties as you wish. 

Every month there will be a prize drawn randomly from the links in the linky party. January’s linky will be open at Patterns by Jen from Jan 24 – Jan 31, and a winner will be chosen on Feb 1st. January’s prize is sponsored by Northcott and is a set of 2.5″ strips….. win this and you’ll be all set for June’s challenge! 🙂

And…. every linky party that you enter will also give you one entry for the Grand Prize. Which is to have a quilt top quilted by Jen of Dizzy Quilter! There are a few details you should know about this prize, but winning this would be a serious coup.

That’s all fantastic. But I’m here for the Red Bear!

Indeed. We should definitely get on now to what’s happening for Jen’s Monthly Color Challenge here at Clever Chameleon.

Every month of 2018 I am going to make an appliqué bear in Jen’s nominated colour. And for the duration of the Color Challenge I am also making the patterns available to you so that you can make them too. Together these 12 bears will form the blocks of a rainbow bear quilt suitable for a  single (twin)-size bed.

So without further ado, I present to you, the Red Bear of New Beginnings. New Year’s Red Ted is celebrating fresh starts and the courage to try new things. He is stepping out with the intention of improving something or discovering something. 2018 is his year!

The Red Bear has a butterfly on his tummy to remind him to never fear new beginnings or be ashamed to change his path for the better.

Or he has a beetle on his tum…..

This month I have pulled out all the stops and given you two options for the motif on the Red Bear’s tummy. Most months there will only be a single pattern, but the first month is special, right? And perhaps there are children out there who would rather something less fluttery on their quilt than a butterfly. So I thought very hard, and decided that beetles start as grubs, pupate and then emerge as spectacular flying insects. So why should butterflies always get the glory as the poster child for change and renewal? Beetles do a complete metamorphosis too .

So, the other Red Bear has a beetle on his tummy, also to remind him to never fear new beginnings or be ashamed to change his path for the better.

The beetle/butterfly choice is all yours. Of course, you can abandon both the butterfly and the beetle and put anything you like on your bear’s tummy if you wish.

How to get the Red Bear Appliqué Pattern?

Sorry, this free pattern download has expired…. it will be available for purchase in due course. Perhaps you would like to join the free 2019 Love with a Twist BOM here instead!

Further to the pattern file, the fabric and notion requirements for the Red Bear block are at the end of this post. The technique I used to make my bear is free motion raw edge appliqué. If you are already proficient at free motion raw edge appliqué you should need very little further guidance to create your Red Bear. 

If you do need more help, I will be posting further instructions and tips to supplement the pdf pattern over the next few days (Update: done!). This current post is already mammoth enough! Also, some instructions will be applicable to every bear and will serve us better over the year if they can be accessed directly, not buried in this post.

However, there are a few things I want to discuss with you right up front.

I am going to trapunto each of my bear appliqués.

This makes the fusible appliqué less flat and dimensionless. It also means that I do not need to use a stabiliser (stabilizer) while I am stitching the appliqué. Because the trapunto layer is also my stabiliser.

Stabiliser, you say?! For some choices of machine-stitched appliqué techniques, the fusible webbing and multiple layers of fabric in raw edge appliqué are sufficient to keep your work flat. However, if you are finding that your stitching is pulling at your design and distorting your work, you will need to use a stabiliser to keep your appliqué flat. Here is a good review of stabilisers. 

But may I just recommend the trapunto?

I am a beginner and/or I don’t free motion stitch. Can I do the Beary Colourful BOM?

Of course! You may want to wait a couple of days to get started though. I am preparing a blog post (update: done!) to cover some minor adjustments to the block that will make the bear simpler. These adjustments will be particularly helpful if you do not wish to use free motion straight stitching to secure your appliqué. Free motion stitching allows you to easily appliqué very small pieces and around very tight corners. Some of the corners and small pieces in the original pattern may send you balmy if you try to secure them with more traditional appliqué stitches such as zigzag or blanket stitch. 

I prefer needle-turn/hand-stitched appliqué. Can I do the Beary Colourful BOM?

Certainly, if you are independent. You will need to know how to add your own seam allowances to the pattern, as this pattern is designed as a raw-edge appliqué pattern. You may also want to follow the simplification guidelines to deal with unrealistically small details. Beyond that – I don’t do hand appliqué so I can’t offer you any further knowledgeable help.

Where are we headed?

You are welcome to set your bear blocks into a quilt top however you like. But, I know some people/groups are looking at this quilt as a charity quilt option (good on you!) and I thought it may be helpful to lay out my intentions for a simple quick finish after you have laboured over all the blocks. My current intention is to finish the Beary Colourful Quilt off very simply by adding sashing between the blocks, followed by a plain border. The bear blocks will finish at 12″ by 15.5″.

If you add jelly-roll (2″ finished) strips between the blocks, 4″ wide side borders and 6″ wide top and bottom borders, the final size of this quilt will be 48″ by 80″. This will fit on top of a single (twin) bed with 5-6″ overhang on each side and at the bottom. Increasing the sashing widths a little will get more overhang.

I intend to do February’s blue bear in dark blues, which will leave light blue unrepresented in the quilt and a perfect candidate for the sashing colour.

What you will need to make the Red Bear block

• Fabric for the background of the block. Each bear block will require a base fabric square of at least 13.5″ by 17″ to allow leeway for trimming. I used a light-grey tone on tone print and a similar batik for my two Red Bear blocks. You should be able to get 3 blocks across the WOF of most quilting-weight cotton fabrics.
• Thin batting for the trapunto layer. I use a polyester batting of 1/8th inch loft that I buy by the yard at my local quilt shop. The red bear requires a trapunto batting square of approximately 11″ x 15″.
• Fusible paper-backed fabric adhesive (for example vliesofix). 15″ x 24″ will be ample for the red bear.
• Red fabric scraps for the main sections of the bear. The whole bear requires the equivalent of 6″ x 24″ of red fabric. But he is built from pieces, so you can use multiple smaller scraps if you wish.
• White/light colour fabric scraps for the muzzle and tummy,  5″ x 8″. If shadowing bothers you (when fabrics show through the layer above slightly) you may wish to cut two each of the muzzle and tummy pieces and make these sections out of two layers of fabric. Then you will need 10″ x 8″ of white/light fabric. 

• Various coloured small fabric scraps for eyes, nose, mouth, paws, inner ears and tummy motif appliqué shapes. 
• Machine embroidery or sewing threads to match your appliqué fabrics (I used rayons for a little shine, but cottons are prefered if you are securing with only a single round of stitching)
• General tools: sewing machine, iron etc, teflon ironing sheet or baking paper, small sharp scissors, pencil, chalk/washout fabric marker, quilting pins, black permanent fabric marker
• Optional but helpful: curved blade embroidery snips and a furry friend to sit on your mending pile to provide guilt-free sewing time. Thanks Mew!

Wow! I think that’s all I need to tell you until tomorrow! Tomorrow I will put together a pictorial walk-through of how I put my red appliqué bears together. (Update: this post is now available).

Until then, enjoy the blog hop!

P.S. Have you liked Clever Chameleon on Facebook? That is where you will get your first glimpses of the Blue Bear of High Hopes before February!

P.P.S This is the first full scale pattern I have produced for online download. Should you have issues with this pattern, I would be grateful for your assistance in reporting problems so I can correct them and learn for next time. Thanks!!

P.P.P.S. Sharing the Red Bear of New Beginnings on all my favourite linkys this week! Cooking up Quilts, Love Laugh Quilt, Sew Can Do, Inquiring Quilter, Quilt Fabrication, Sew Fresh Quilts, My Quilt Infatuation, Crazy Mom Quilts, Confessions of a Quilt Addict, Busy Hands Quilts.
And I would have shared on Freemotion by the River, but Connie already did it for me! Thanks so much Connie!

---

Don’t want to miss a bear in the Beary Colourful BOM? You can follow my blog directly for email updates, or through Bloglovin’. Sneak peeks of next month’s bear will also appear throughout the year at Clever Chameleon Quilting on Facebook. All your follow options can be found here.