Redwork - and Laura Ingalls Wilder's
Bear Paw Quilt
The Ingalls family moved to Burr Oak in 1876 when Laura was just nine years old. The family lived in the village for just part of the year, in the Master's Hotel (a bar and tavern and refuge for travelers). The family helped William Steadman to cook, clean, and do the daily chores. The family lived in the basement of the hotel, and Ma Ingalls cooked for the traveling guests of the hotel. The museum at Burr Oak (the Master's Hotel) is the only Ingalls family home that is still on its original site. Burr Oak is where baby Grace was born, however, Wilder did not publish a manuscript detailing her days in Burr Oak but instead incorporated some of the incidents into the stories (On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake) before and after the time the family lived in Burr Oak.
Two other writers have written about the Burr Oak days. Historian and scholar William Anderson wrote The Iowa Story (Laura Ingalls Wilder Park & Museum, 1989; 62 pages), and Cynthia Rylant wrote Old Town in the Green Groves (HarperCollins, 2007).
Read more about the Burr Oak Museum on this earlier blog post at http://iowahistory.blogspot.com/2013/09/.
But back to the quilt inspiration.
When Laura was creating quilt blocks as a child there were not standard names or patterns as have developed in later years. Researchers who have studied Laura's writings and artifacts at the many museums devoted to her life have consistently mentioned the Bear's Paw as one of the quilt squares she likely would have created for quilts. So when the Herbert Hoover Museum (in West Branch, Iowa) which holds the Laura Ingalls Wilder (and Rose Wilder Lane) manuscripts decided to hold a quilting bee they solicited quilt blocks from quilters across Iowa (and other states) which were then to be sewn into a quilt. They sent out a focus fabric and from there quilters could use their own imagination to piece a block to send back to the museum.
Pattern for the 12 inch block.
I used the focus fabric the museum sent as the fabric #3; and choose a small blue floral for the complementary #4 fabric and for the #6 square.
The 8 1/2 inch square could have been the same fabric as the #3 (focus) fabric but I did not have enough of that for the 8 1/2 inch square. Scraps of the fabric were all I had left. I thought about putting a marbleized gray fabric in as the large square but decided that was too blah. So I choose to use the scraps of the #3 and #4 fabric along with two shades of gray to create a scrappy 8 1/2 inch square. There is are excellent YouTube tutorials for making a crazy scrap quilt pattern at:
- Missouri Star Quilt Company. (2012 March 12). The Crazy Quilt - The Ultimate Stash Buster! Retrieved from https://youtu.be/l9QKruDO8tk.
- Fons and Porter. (2017 August 14). Sew Easy: Crazy Pieced Quilt Blocks Made Simple. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/fjt4nqrlmdA.
But the scrappiest crazy block technique is this one --
I love this one - so practical, quick - no pattern, no template, just creativity and fun. You need a foundation piece - muslin, cheap cotton - use 100% cotton.
- rmhitsman. (2016 January 24). Crazy Quilt Block. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/oOczBAtJKHc.
For my crazy quilt center block (actually taking the place of the #6 fabric) for the Herbert Hoover Museum Quilting Bee I used a piece of white cotton for the foundation and began with a five sided piece of focus fabric. Then I incorporated the #3 and #4 fabrics, and two shades of gray together.
And finally using the pattern as a guide for how to sew the blocks together I stitched two claws onto the large scrappy square; and then created a strip with the small square and two claws and sewed it onto the side of the large square ... and here is the bear claw all ready to send off to the Herbert Hoover Museum for the quilting bee.
How fun was that?
Give it a try -- make twenty bear paw squares - and make a 4 x 5 block quilt.
Sharron
