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.