My Dandelion Quilt - Bear Paw

The names "bear paw" and "bear's paw" seem to be in free variation, both when I search online or look in Rosanne's quilting books, and in my own writing!  For the sake of this blog, I'll try to stick to "bear paw", but the other option is equally correct.  It's a nice representational block: it looks like a stylized pawprint.  Compare some actual pawprints with the block:

The paws and prints of an American black bear and brown bear, from The Grizzly Bear; the narrative of a hunter naturalist, historical, scientific and adventurous (1909) by William Henry Wright

Mini Bear Paw Quilt Block with Sashing, photo by sk (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/)

The quilt block bear is missing a toe, but otherwise it does look like a pawprint, and it is commonly used in rustic quilts for that backwoods feel.  I like the block for my Dandelion Quilt because, if done in greens, it looks like the leaves of a plant whorling out from a central stem. 

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