Baby Bear Trio!

 I know, I know..... more bears. This is the last of my bear designs. I just needed to make a design with three baby bears playing in the woods. They could be playing peek a boo, or hiding from their mama. Last year when I saw this trio, they were crossing the road hubby and I were taking to go home from a vacation at the lake in Northern Minnesota. We saw mama bear cross the road first and then her babies, one by one. I was so excited I couldn't hold onto my phone right to take a picture! Hubby was keeping a close eye on the mama bear who was standing on her hind legs in the road ditch next to us. These bears were mere feet away from our vehicle and they appear cuter when you're in the safety of your car and not out on a walk. I didn't get a picture, the bears disappeared into the woods by the time I got my phone ready to take a picture. My phone was very glitchy since it had also gone for a swim in the lake earlier in the week and then spent the rest of our vacation sitting in a container of rice.

To make this design, you first will have to trace all of your pieces onto the paper side of your fusible web, I'm using Flexifuse so that I can use my printer to print the shapes onto the paper side, it's a great time saver. I then roughly cut the shapes out and iron these onto the wrong side of the fabric. Then I cut all of the pieces out as pictured above.

There's a little tricky bit on the bear that is climbing the tree. When you lay the bears body onto the towel, the bears little paws will wrap around the top of the tree and the remaining sections of the bear's body will tuck behind the tree.

Following the page layout sheet, I position all of the pieces onto my towel and then press everything in place with a hot iron.

Working black on black is never easy,  especially at my age. So a little trick I use is I draw along the edge of the top shape with a white pencil. This particular pencil line will disappear with a hot iron. 

Drawing along the edges of the bear's head and nose really makes a difference when it come to stitching. It makes it so much easier to sew the buttonhole stitch along all the raw edges, especially where it's dark fabric on dark fabric.

I did my stitching using a dark brown thread using a buttonhole stitch that is on  my machine.

~ Woodland Trio ~

To finish this design, I embroidered the bear's eyes using the French knot stitch. I used a black pearl cotton for my stitching, Three strands of DMC floss would work just as well. This would be a cute design made into a pillow or collect all of my bear and cabin designs and turn this fun design into a lap sized quilt. 

I hope that you enjoy this new design. It is available on the Quilt Doodle Website and also in my Etsy store, or a quilt store near you!

Hope you have a great day!

Happy quilting,

Cindy and Belvedere