Baby Quilt with a Gathered Border

When there is a new baby in the house, or on the way, we crafters get so inspired. This photo is of my first granddaughter, Alyssa, when she was just a few weeks old. One of my projects was to crochet this little blue dress for her. Yes, I understand that traditionally blue is for the little boys - but her father thought she would look pretty in blue. And of course she does.


The body of her baby quilt was made simply. I cut 8 inch squares of two fabrics. One was a mottle blue and one was a cherub fabric. Then I put it together with sashing strips.

What made this little quilt really special was the gathered border, made from another cherub fabric. To simplify the process of adding the border, I first rounded the corners of the quilt top. I did this by laying a plate face down on the top. I lined it up with the sides of the quilt, and then traced the curve of the plate at each corner.


In order to add this gathered border, I cut a 4 1/2" strip that was twice the measurement of the quilt edge. I then put a basting thread 1/4" in from each edge of the strip. I gathered one edge, pinning it (right side to right side) to the quilt edge in a 2:1 ratio. I then gathered the outside edge, being careful that the gathers would correspond to the first set of gathers. That was the trickiest part of the whole process.

Quick and Easy Projects

Here we have an example of a quilt that is easy and quick to make. I cut 12 inch squares of two different fabrics and alternated them. One was a Christmas print, with various Christmas scenes. The other was a coordinating print that reminded me of stained glass.

To fancy it up a bit I separated these squares with black borders, adding joining stars of various yellow fabrics.

This quilt was made for a Christmas Craft Sale at my church. And yes, that is yours truly standing to the right of the quilt. I do NOT have tattooed arms though! There is just some damage on the photo.

Cover Me with Love

This is a very special quilt, made for a very special girl. One year when I was teaching first grade, Alma (one of my students) was with her father out in front of the school when he had a massive heart attack and died instantly. He was not even thirty years old.

Quilters in the Guardian Angles Swap contributed the squares in this quilt, and I put it together for Alma. I told her that there were a lot of people who really cared about her and her family, and what had happened to her father.

Alma is the little girl in the white T-shirt. Her cousin Johnny is sitting on her right. I took the squares to class as they arrived, and we would lay them out on the floor. Alma herself decided how the squares were to be arranged.

The smile on Alma's face says a lot about how healing a quilt can be in a time of grief.

My husband Tom is on the right. Myrna, the woman on the left, taught in the room next to mine. We were both teaching bilingual first grade in Irving, Texas, at the time.

It was so good to have such a physical way of providing comfort to Alma.

A Treasured Scrap Quilt

Doesn't seem quite right to call this a Scrap Quilt, but it was made entirely with squares left over from other projects. The majority of them were left from a quilt made for my sister Peg,

I also incorporated some fish squares I had accumulated in a swap, and one of the VERY few squares I have appliqued: the octopus you will find in the lower central portion of the quilt.

My daughter Jennifer is on the right. She is the owner of this quilt.

A Charm Quilt for Christmas

This is another example of a charm quilt. This one was made for my good friend Martha Cooper, and was a Christmas present.

The cool thing about charm quilts is that they have that homey quality we associate with quilts, and are a relatively simple quilt to make. They are great quilts for beginners.

Strip-pieced Watercolor Quilting

This lovely quilt was a graduation present for my niece, Sally Marie Beglau. She is on the right, her father Bob is in the background, and her younger sister Katy is on the left.

This quilt was my first experiment with strip-pieced watercolor quilting. I purchased no additional fabric for the front side of this quilt. (Though I must admit I purchased a fancy music print for the back side ;-) It was made entirely from strips I had saved as I collected fabrics for my watercolor stash.

The Making of a Watercolor Quilt

Here's another picture of that watercolor quilt, along with more details of its construction.


I purchased, swapped, and cut fabric for nine months before beginning the project. I constructed it in sixteen sections which were quilted individually. Then I put the sixteen sections together using a binding, which I hand stitched down on the back side.


I applied a skirt around three sides of the quilted top, at my mother's request. I doubled the fabric for the skirt, and gathered it. I applied it to the backside of the quilt, incorporating a binding into the seam. Then I folded the binding back over to the right side and stitched it down by hand. This resulted in a "piping" which was another detail my mom had requested.


This queen size quilt is reversible; I used a lovely batik with a fern pattern on the back side. I am also made my mother pillow shams, and a ruffle for her window valance, in the same fabric as the skirt.



Here is a picture of the quilt in its design stages. My husband put up a design wall at the end of my sewing room by screwing ceiling tiles into the wall. I then covered the wall with pink flannel. I purchased "quilt and fuse" grid, which I cut into squares that were 11 x 13 small two inch squares. It took a total of 2,288 two inch squares of fabric to finish the design.

In addition to being a watercolor quilt, it became a memory quilt. Among the 2,288 squares are 20 - 30 which are in the quilt specifically because they conjure up various memories. Most of the memories just came up as I worked with the various fabrics.

However, there were two squares which I really wanted to include and was able to do so because of the sharing nature of participants in a watercolor email list I participated in at the time. The two special squares were of a moose & a tuba.

Here is a picture that reveals some of the detail of the quilt.... an example of the way I fit special squares into it. Can you find the moose? When my brothers were teenagers, "moose" is the nickname they used for my mom for several years. Thanks to the helpful quilters on the watercolor list at quiltropolis.com, I was actually able to find a moose to call up this memory for my mom.


This quilt now rests on the bed of my granddaughter Alyssa - so it truly has become an inter-generational quilt.

My First Watercolor Quilt

This quilt was my first watercolor project. It contains 2,288 two inch squares.

It is a quilt pieced for my sweet mother, Carol Joy Erickson Beglau, who died July 7, 2006. When I first began quilting, I made this rash statement to my family members that I was going to make each of them a quilt. I started with my brothers and sisters, and used log cabin designs for all of those quilts.

Each time I would ask my mother is she would like for me to make her a quilt she would say, "Oh no, Mary. You spend so much time on them." Then one weekend when I went to see her, I brought some quilt design books, and she fell in love with the watercolor ones. I told her I would make her one, having NO idea what I was getting myself into.

Before starting the project, I purchased, swapped, washed, pressed, cut and sorted fabrics for nine months! I did this through a 6"+ watercolor swap I sponsored as well as other swaps hosted by the watercolor list at www.quiltropolis.com.

There were even kind ladies on the list who helped me locate specific squares to commemorate various aspects of my mom's life. For instance, in high school she played a tuba. Voila... no sooner asked for than it arrived in the mail. And whoever thought I would find a moose that would fit in a 2" square!!! But it is there... as a reminder of the days when "Moose" was my brothers' nickname for my mother. Hidden throughout the quilt are about 50 squares of this sort that are memory squares.

I used a pattern from one of Deanna Spingola's books as a starting point, and then adjusted it as needed. Also though Deanna's method is strip-piecing, this baby was put together one little square at a time. For info on Deanna's books, check out her website, which is located at http://www.spingola.com

This quilt was made to fit the top of my mom's bed, and then I fitted it with a skirt, as this was what she wanted. She used to have a painting of the ocean above the bed that was jus perfect. It really pulled out the dark colors in the quilt.

Quilts for Comfort

That is me, yours truly, on the left. My sister-in-law Jean Wykes is in the middle, and my husband's oldest brother Jim Wykes is on the right.

After a hard battle with lung cancer, Jim died on January 14, 2000. He cuddled a lot with this quilt.

It is an example of a 4 patch square, alternated with a plain square. This is the same method used for my sister Peg's medallion quilt. The only difference was that hers had a medallion of Drunkard's Path squares in the middle.

What is fun about Jim's quilt is the back side! I really wish I had a picture of the back side, because it is my favorite part of this quilt.

Simple and Fun

Simple, quick, easy.... and fun!

This quilt uses a jelly bean fabric, probably cut in 10 inch squares, though I couldn't swear to it at this point. Using the colors of the jelly beans, I created a strip pieced border, using black joining squares for an accent. This was really a fun project to work on.

This cuddle quilt is currently in the possession of Shelly Pruitt, my son Walt's first wife.

My Daughter's First Quilt

All of you quilters out there know how it warms our hearts when our daughters, sons or grandchildren begin to make their own quilts! This is my daughter Jennifer holding her first creation: a baby quilt for a friend. She applied her usual creativity to simple piecing and came up with a charming quilt.

An Unusual Wedding Quilt

This is definitely THE largest quilt I have ever made! It was a gift to my daughter when she married her first husband. They are standing in a pickup to get up high enough to show the whole quilt! This baby measures 3 yards by 3 yards, which was the perfect size for their California King bed which was on a massive frame.

The placement of squares in this creation was strongly influenced by my interest in watercolor quilting. I wanted the color to flow from one square to another as much as possible.

Her husband was a biologist, an ornithologist (bird biologist), to be exact. I let them pick out fabrics they liked online, and then it was my task to figure out how to fit them together.

In the quilt there is a combo of insects, birds and celestial prints. They had also fallen in love with some painted batik panels and chose six to be incorporated into this quilt. I used two on the front of the quilt and then worked four into the back side.

A variety of celestial and zodiac prints chosen by Jen and her ex surround the four panels. In addition to being huge, this quilt is thick! The batting is 1 inch, so needless to say I used machine quilting. I told my daughter there was no way she would be able to wash this baby in her washing machine at home!

Another interesting note on this quilt involves my husband Tom. Every time I think about it's construction, I remember how helpful he was one day when I realized I had made a big error. I quilted this baby in sections, and realized in horror that I had quilted one of them with the back piece upside down. I absolutely did not have the emotional whatever to rip out that quilting! I didn't know what I was going to do.

My sweet hubby sat down that afternoon with a seam ripper and did it for me. The cool part was that when we gave this wedding quilt to our daughter, I could then say that it was in truth from both her father and me.

A Simple Charm Quilt

I made this quilt for my sister Nicki, who had always wanted a charm quilt...a quilt in which no two squares are the same. So, it is a fabric sampler.


Charm quilts are among the simplest to make, and have such a homey look to them. I have made several for friends, and for baby shower gifts.

This quilt was machine pieced and quilted.

Star/Cross Wall Hanging

Of all of the quilts I have made, this is one of my personal favorites. It was made for a minister friend who helped me through some really difficult times, and is displayed on the wall of his study.

It took me over a year to collect all of the fabrics for this wall hanging, and each one holds a special symbolism. I found this quilt very difficult to construct, for I had never pieced diamonds before.

I did use a strip piecing technique, but on close inspection one can see that all of my points do not meet exactly. As I worked on this quilt, and its beauty became evident in spite of my errors, one of the guiding principles behind quilting became especially meaningful. The principle is this: every quilt should have at least one error, for only God is perfect.

My mother liked this wall hanging so much that she commissioned me to do two more for minister friends of hers. If I can locate the pictures, I will post them at a later date.

Split Rail Lap Quilt

This is my sister Peg, holding one of the first quilts I made. The pattern is called "split rail" or "streak of lightning." I made this with scraps leftover from the rainbow quilt.

I presented this little lap quilt to a friend of Peg's who lives near Washington, D.C. She had invited me to come to her church to give a concert. It was a very special time for me, for it was the first time I had been invited out of state to sing.

My sister and her friend were convinced that this concert was going to set me on the road to a career with my singing. In actuality, it was a concert with only about 5 people in attendance. Peg's friend had not realized it was a weekend which had many other activities on the calendar. I sang my heart out for those 5 people though, and had a wonderful time.

A Quilted Wall Hanging Sampler

This heart sampler is a wall hanging I made for my sister Nicki. I used scraps from the two queen size log cabin quilts which I made for her.

It measures about 18 x 24 inches. The individual squares were sewn by machine, using the foundation piecing method.

Guardian Angel Quilt

Now this quilt has a real history behind it! From 1994 to 1996 I sponsored a 12 inch square swap on the Prodigy on-line network. Each participant chose favorite colors. We traded with 1 person a month, and these were the rules:

We had to use our partner's favorite colors... but we could add any other colors we liked. We could piece by hand or machine, do piecing or applique. We were all to use our imaginations!

There were about 30 women in the group, from all over the country... Florida, California, New York, Texas etc. We became very close, and began to pray for each other. Many in the group were going through very difficult times.

We all had nicknames too! Mine was Imagination's Child. I had the privilege of helping many of the others pick on-line names. We had Wild Rachel, Mermaid, Princess Puddinghead, Hummingbird, etc.

One day Mermaid posted a note saying that she just knew that she had a guardian "angle" who helped her through rough times, not realizing that she had misspelled "angel". Well, one of our members with an eye for detail, and a great sense of humor, couldn't let that one pass. Within the day she had posted a note that read: Every quilter needs a guardian "angle"!

The pun, of course, was that angles are very important in the construction of a quilt. And since some angles are more difficult to stitch than others, it wasn't a bad idea to have an angel looking over one's shoulder to offer guidance, or to offer consolation when we had to rip out a bad seam!

After this play on words, our group became known as the "Guardian Angles." I designed an angel logo, which "Cornflake" had silk-screened onto T-shirts along with the words, "Guardian Angle On-line Quilters." The off-center angel medallion in the quilt above was our angel. I originally designed her as a 12 inch square for one of my partners.

This quilt is no longer a part of my life, though it graced a bed in my home for years. When many victims of Katrina moved into Texas after that traumatic storm, I was moved to take it over to the shelter and give it to someone. The people in charge would not allow me to take it inside, and said they couldn't accept it - BUT, they would allow me to give it to someone who was sitting outside.

There was an elderly woman to whom I was able to give this quilt. It warmed my heart to see the pleasure on her face to receive this quilt. Under the circumstances, it was also very special to her to hear the story of the quilt's creation. I expect that it is now considered a treasure in her home.

Butterfly Wings

Today I share with you one of my daughter Jen's latest creations: a set of Monarch butterfly wings, here modeled by her husband Eric. My granddaughter Alyssa is going to be in a play at her school, and she is to be a Monarch butterfly.


Jen has become known as The Butterfly Lady at her school, because last year she raised Monarch and Painted Lady butterflies, and then set them free. She is now planting a milkweed patch in her yard to provide food for the butterflies. She also participated last fall in a Monarch tagging project at a local university.



I have, over the years, marveled at my daughter Jennifer's creativity. I remember when she was three years old, and I gave her a typewriter to play with. She was very pleased, and happily typed away. I had shown her how to use the shift key to get different letters and such. She knew how to roll the paper up and down.


After awhile, she handed me her paper and I went into shock. The child had used the asterisk and the dash keys to create a picture of some flowers! I bet I still have that picture in a box in the closet! If I can find it, I will scan it in and post it.


There were several other times as she was growing up that I was impressed with her unique perspective. When she was around 11, I had given the children Mexican jumping beans, explaining to them that there was a little worm inside the bean that made it jump around.
The child took a little box and created a home for her bean, complete with furniture, and paintings on the wall. It was only about 3 x 3 inches, but it was full of homey details.


Around the same time frame, she made a purse on the sewing machine, without using a pattern. This was something that would have been a real stretch for me, so again I was impressed.


Need I tell you that she created these butterfly wings without a pattern?

Log Cabin Arrow Design

My brother Paul likes to believe that he is part Indian, though in truth we have no Indian blood. So, I chose to use an arrow lay-out for his quilt.

This is another example of a log cabin quilt. It is a king size bedspread.

In the beginning all of the quilts I made were log cabins. I had not yet developed the confidence to branch out.

Log Cabin Painting of a Sunset

Another layout of log cabin squares! I call this the rainbow quilt. It was also made for my sister Nicki. She handed me a picture of a sunset and said, "Here, use these colors."

It was quite a challenge! Because all the colors of the rainbow were in the picture. When I started putting the squares together, I really didn't know if the fabric combination I had chosen was going to work!

But... as you can see... it worked very well. The very fact that there was a strong contrast really makes the design stand out when the squares were put together.

This quilt was made for a long queen size bed.

More Log Cabin Designs

This is another log cabin quilt, pieced for my youngest sister Nicki. Are you beginning to see how versatile this pattern is?

Log cabin squares are very easy to construct, but there are an endless number of ways in which you can put the squares together to form interesting patterns.

In this zigzag quilt, the log cabin square has been created in the traditional fashion. The little red squares at the center of each block symbolize the hearth of the home, and the fabric "logs" the way in which the homes on the frontier were constructed.

Here is another quilt made with the same set of fabrics, and which is also a log cabin.

One of the fascinating aspects of log cabin quilts is the number of ways in which the squares can be arranged. Unfortunately, I am sitting on the only picture I have of this quilt. I am in the process of pin basting the completed top, a process which I no longer struggle with.

At this point in my quilting, I always quilt small sections of a quilt and then use binding strips to put them together, as opposed to giving myself a major backache by machine quilting the whole quilt at once. This quilt is currently in the home of my youngest brother, Bob Beglau.

Warms a Mother's Heart

Now here is a picture to warm a mother's heart - my daughter, wrapped in a quilt we had just finished making together.


In the beginning, most of the quilts I made were log cabin designs. After completing the log cabin section of this one, I made a strip-pieced border from scraps. Jennifer then appliqued flowers around the edges.

Here my eldest son is wrapped in the first quilt I ever completed, though it was the second top I pieced. Walt picked the color scheme. The picture was taken the night I gave him the quilt.


Again, this is a log cabin design. All squares have the same light fabrics; however, there are two color schemes used for the dark portion of the squares. I love the way the placement of the squares in this quilt created a cross within a cross. The colors are truer in this picture of the full quilt.

Quilting a Song

Quilting a Song

Quilting a song - now that is a concept that may seem strange to you; yet when I began to quilt, I sensed a real similarity to the way I write my songs.

Just as I would search for just the right fabric for a quilt, or a quilt block - I would search for just the right word, just the right turn of phrase for my song lyrics.

Just as I would rummage through my mind, I would rummage through my fabric stash.

As I walked through a fabric store, I would look for fabrics that called to each other.

In other words, in my mind my two crafts became very intertwined.

My Goal for this Blog

As I develop this blog, it is my plan to incorporate photos of many of my quilting projects as well as lyrics from some of my songs. I intend to find a way to link to the songs and/or find a way for you to download them.

I am in no way well known, yet there's a group of people who really seem to love my music. Perhaps you will be one of them.

I imagine that some of my other projects will find their way into this blog as well - perhaps some of my lace or Fair Isle knitting - some of my watercolor paintings.

I just like to share. When I complete a project, I'm like a little kid that wants to show it to someone. Perhaps no one will be interested. But - it can't hurt to reach out.

Drunkard's Path

The picture above is of a quilt medallion, i.e. the center piece for a larger quilt. It was pieced using a pattern called Drunkard's Path, or Pumpkin Vine. It contains over 400 pieces.

Each square is composed of two pieces with opposite curves. Though traditionally pieced by hand, I did this work on the sewing machine. It became the center medallion in a queen size bed quilt made for my sister Peg.


Here you see the medallion in the finished project. The rest of the quilt was pieced using a 4-patch construction.

When Peg first had this quilt she used to say, "No one leaves my house without first having to admire my quilt!"

Peg is also my biggest fan for my music. She is a nurse, and prior to being disabled by chemo and radiation for cancer she used to work on a floor in the hospital where many people didn't survive. She used to give copies of my cassettes to her patients.

I felt like we were partners in ministry, as many of her patients told her that my music helped them cope with illness and death. What better compliment could I possibly receive.