Wilderness Bear Baby Blanket

A while back I heard the wonderful news that my sweet friend Sarah was having baby number 2. I waited very patiently for the next announcement that they were having a boy. My head tried it’s hardest to come up with something fun for this soon coming man cub, but I was getting nowhere.

It was time to send in the spy! Since I live an ocean away, I sent a message to her mom, who also happens to be a very sweet friend of mine, asking her if she would accept the mission of finding out what type of theme Sarah was wanting for his room. The report came back. She’s wanting a blue and gray wilderness theme.

Ah, that narrowed it down. I searched all over Pinterest for a jumping off point. Nothing. Not one idea out there was anywhere close to the vague blob of ideas that were trying to form in my brain. Bears, trees, mountains? How do I get them all together? And in blue and gray? Greens and browns, sure, but blue and gray?

Well, after much prayer, searching for more specific block ideas like “trees” or “mountains” and pages of sketched ideas I finally had a plan that I liked.

Yes, it’s rather scribbly, but it was a start.

I should really tell you now that this is not going to be a step-by-step guide to making this quilt. There was a lot of trying things out, changing things as I went along, building blocks as I went along, measurement mistakes, seam ripping, and plenty of time spent staring blankly at the ceiling. But, all in all, it did finally turn out.

I have a lot of pictures to show you what I did. As for measurements and exact directions, those are not happening in this post. Sorry.

First up: Bear Paws

To start off I made the Bear Paw blocks for the corners. This block is all over online. I got my pattern from Diary of a Quilter.

1. Cut all pieces.
2. Sew the claws.
3. Sew paws together.
4. Sew rows together to make a block.

Ta-da! A finished Bear Paw. Four of these were made.

Now onto the tree blocks.

I found the block I wanted to use as a guide at AQSblog.com. This is their block from an Earth Day quilt:

It’s a free pattern, but I didn’t really read much past that on the blog until I started to make it. Turns out it makes a 16 x 16 inch block and the instructions are for paper piecing. Oops! I need to make 12 inch blocks.

This one wasn’t so hard to resize. The big tree sections needed to be 6 inches and each little tree was to be 3 inches. Easy enough right? Well, I suppose it would have been if I hadn’t been listening to murder mysteries on YouTube instead of paying attention to my measurements.

I made the little trees.

What in the world was I thinking with those measurements? Well, at least it was easy enough to trim down to size.

I made the big trees.

I realized I made the bottom green part too wide. Once other pieces would be sewn to the sides the tips of the tree would have been cut off. So, I ripped and re-sewed.

I changed things up a bit from the original block instructions. I added blue to the top to look like sky.

Then for the bottom block I rearranged the trees and cut out a section for a stream.

The blue swirly fabric was added to make the stream. Actually, I managed to cut the blue too small and had to rip it out and try again. Here is take two of the finished trees with stream block.

Now onto the mountains

Though I searched and searched for the perfect block with easy to use instructions I found none. There were plenty of mountain blocks, but just none that were what I was hoping for. So I sketched some up and made them as I went along.

This is the first one:

I arranged my fabrics to get an overall feel if I liked the color placement.

It looked good, so I got started. The pieces didn’t have exact sizes. I just built it up as I went along.

1. First up were the snowy tops to the mountains.
2. Then some sky.
3. A blue snowy mountain.
4. Lower light gray hills.
5. More to the blue mountain and sky.
6. Then two levels of green for the fields.

I was going to leave it at that, but once all the blocks were done, I went back and added a bit more of the dark green.

Next came the second mountain block.

This one went together much in the same way.

1. Some snowy capped mountains with sky.
2. More snow capped mountains.
3. More snow capped mountains with sky.
4. A lower light gray hill to the left.
5. A dark green strip for a field.
6. A light green piece for a closer field.

I like how this mountain range turned out better than the first one. Brother liked the first one more. He also was not a fan of how the two blocks did not match. I tried to explain that it was a like a continuous mountain range so they needed to be different, but he wasn’t having it. Good thing it’s not for him!

Now onto the Bear!

Once again, I couldn’t find a bear block I liked for this blanket. I found plenty of cute ideas, just not what I was looking for. The graphing paper came out again.

I drew it at 1/2 scale so that I just had to double the size of the blocks and add a seam allowance to get the fabric pieces to the right-ish size.

Here’s the rough cut outs. I originally had blue for the eyes, but once it was cut and laid out the blue was too bright and kind of looked like the eyes were glowing. It was creepy, so black took it’s place.

I started at the center of the bear and moved my way out.

1. Eyes and surrounding brown.
2. Mouth and upper lips.
3. Blue for the bottom of the block. (This was removed and made wider after I tried to sew the side pieces on and didn’t have enough seam allowance. You can see the change in #6.)
4. The nose, upper muzzle and brown for between the eyes.
5. Add the sides to the muzzle.
6. Attach all pieces to make the center of the face.

Next up was to fill out the face. And because art is sometimes a reflection of the artist, this bear got a very high forehead.

1. Attach forehead and trim excess.
2. Make cheeks and background.
3. Attach cheeks.
4. Attach background to lower part of the block. Trim upper corners of the forehead.

Now comes the fun part of the bear, the ears! They are not sewn down, they are floppy!

1. Draw the ear shape adding extra for seam allowance.
2. Cut two brown and one tan for each ear.
3. Hand stitch tan piece onto front of ear. Layer batting, sewn ear right side up and second brown piece right side down.
4. Sew around arch, trim batting and turn right side out.
5. Pin in place and sew bear, ears and back ground together.
6. Play with floppy ear.

Aww, look at that sweet face!

Time to put it together!

Bear in the middle, trees with sky at the top, trees with stream at the bottom, mountain ranges to the sides, bear paws in the corners and dark blue sashing in between the blocks and around the outside.

Since everything is closed over here I had to order a piece for the back of the quilt. I found this one online at a store called Brooklyn Fabric. This pattern is Bear Camp by Windham.

Here it is all put together and bound.

One more shot before it gets ready for it’s long journey across the pond to America, Louisiana to be exact.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison. A few things changed.

1: I wasn’t able to do a green border like in the sketch because the backing fabric was just big enough to fit with the blue border.

2: The bottom tree block was rearranged so that the trees weren’t in the same position as in the top and the stream changed direction.

All in all, I think it turned out pretty much like what I had floating around in my head.

I sure hope this soon coming man cub has lots of fun dragging it around, cuddling up with his mom and dad for story time and naps, and maybe even playing bears on it with his big sister, Ashley Ann.

See Ashley Ann’s blanket here.

Thanks for sticking around to see how this all went together! Have a wonderfully blessed day!

Hey! Check this out!

Noelle Young sent in some pictures of her version of the Wilderness Bear baby blanket. She says she was looking for ideas for a friend whose baby room theme was trees and bears because she and her husband love to go to their Wisconsin cabin.

Noelle took some direction from my blanket and made changes to fit the look she was going for and it turned out adorable!

Thank you for sharing, Noelle!