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.