Bargello Heart Quilt

This quilt was a present for my oldest son Walt and his then girlfriend Cindy. I told them it was a premarital quilt, as it was a wedding quilt in anticipation of the event. Cindy is on the left, I'm in the center, and of course that is Walt on the right.

I used several new techniques on this quilt. First of all, it was my first bargello quilt. I must say that the construction was a bit daunting! However, I am VERY pleased with the final product.

This was also the first time that I followed the design itself for the quilting process.... and EACH round of the heart was quilted. This resulted in a shrinkage of about 4" in the width of the quilt, so the borders had to be larger than originally planned.

This is the back side of the same quilt. For the past few years, I have been unable to resist using prints on the back side of all my quilts, and especially enjoy either co-ordinating them with the front side, or creating a "surprise".

Walt and Cindy are very fond of Egyptian themes, and were planning on having a honeymoon in Hawaii... so I combined Egyptian and Hawaiian prints on the back side. If someone didn't know why I used that combo, they would probably wonder about my taste in fabrics. But then again, maybe they will anyway!

Cindy is on the left, and that is me on the right... with VERY short hair. My sister Peg had been going through chemo and when she started losing her hair she decided to just shave her head. Though I didn't shave mine down to the skin, I did use the clippers and cut it down to about 1/4 inch. It was a "sympathy" haircut, so she wouldn't feel so self conscious. It was kind of nice really! VERY easy. Nice and cool.

Voila! Walt, his son Jacob, and Cindy ... cuddled under their new bargello heart quilt. Walter is an actor and a playwright. Cindy is an actress, seamstress, and costume designer. Jacob is up and coming!

My granddaughter Alyssa Marie was an infant at the time this quilt was presented to Walt and Cindy. Here she is wearing her shamrock outfit, made especially for St. Patrick's Day by yours truly, of course! She is about 3 months old.

We just couldn't resist taking a pic of her lying on Uncle Walt and Aunt Cindy's new quilt when we realized the center of the heart looked like wings!

Now here is . . . the rest of the story:

Walt called me from Hawaii, while on his honeymoon. He was quite distressed. They had been scuba diving that afternoon.

While in the ocean, he had felt something bump against his leg and panicked - thinking it was a shark. He looked down to see his billfold floating to the bottom of the ocean floor. He had been so excited about going scuba diving that he had forgotten to take it out of his swimsuit. Every time I think about this incident the picture it conjures up in my mind makes me chuckle.

Fortunately, the authorities allowed Walt to get on the plane to come home, even though he didn't have his driver's license. I think he and Cindy just went to the police station and made a statement that the billfold had been lost. Needless to say, this was prior to 9/11.

About 2 months later, Walt got a package in the mail from Hawaii. His billfold was inside, complete with all the cash that had been in it and his credit cards. There had been some wedding checks as well; but they were of course no good. He was amazed that the money was undamaged. and of course pleased that someone had found and returned it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.