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.