Presented August 29, 2003
68" x 50"
1,092 squares

This quilt was made for the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center, where Harold, my father-in-law, is the senior director. 2003 was the Center's 25th anniversary. In preparations for the celebration, the main lobby was being reorganized and redecorated. I was asked to make a wallhanging for the front office.

Originally I thought about finding fabrics with neat animal prints and using a traditional block for the quilt. I also considered using paper foundation patterns of a variety of animals to make the wallhanging. I went in to consult with Harold and Sharon, the office manager, whose desk sits in the main lobby. They called out Steve, the senior vice president, to get his opinion. When he came out of his office Sharon asked, "What would you like to see here?" His first response was, "a window". This comment was made in jest, because an office is on the other side of that wall, preventing a window to the great outdoors. But it got me thinking...

I went home to do an internet search on corporated quilts to see what types of wallhangings had been commissioned elsewhere. I came to the conclusion that most quilts which hang in offices are vibrant and abstract. Very few are traditional patchwork quilts. I found several colorwash or watercolor quilts, which have always fascinated me.

So I returned to Steve's comment about wanting a window and made a proposal to do a watercolor quilt that looked like one. Once the idea was approved, I finalized my sketch for color placement and for quilting lines.

Then I began buying fabrics like crazy. I purchased 1/8-yard of well over 100 fabrics. I used a strip-cutting tool to cut thousands of 2-inch squares and sorted them into floral prints, sky prints and tree prints.

I hung a large piece of flannel printed with a 2" grid to use as a design wall. Then I got to work! I started with the tree on the righthand side. Then I used dark squares to map out the three hills and started filling in the sky and sunrise. I decided the farthest hill would be all green, the middle hill would be dark floral prints and the front hill would be bright floral prints.

You can watch my progress over time:

Taking pictures frequently was very helpful. Even though I could step back and look at the quilt on the wall, it was better to look at a picture on my computer screen. It helped me find squares that needed to be changed.

I should mention that after I committed to this project and got started, I found out I was pregnant. Morning sickness hit pretty hard, and the new school year was looming. Since I was under a deadline, my wonderful mother stepped in and helped out. First, she helped me with fabric placement towards the end. Later she helped me with the quilting progress.

To make piecing go more quickly and accurately, I purchased a lightweight fusible interfacing that had a grid printed on it. I divided the quilt into six sections and used the "fuse, fold and stitch method" proposed by Dina Pappas in her book "Quick Watercolor Quilts". Sewing 25 full-length seams for each section was so much easier than piecing together 182 individual squares!

Because I was short on time, we decided to quilt it in sections and put it all together at the end. After I sewed a section together, my mom quilted it. She brought her machine to my home and we worked simultaneously. She used variegated threads (blues for the sky, greens and browns for the tree, multi-colored for the hills) and different types of stitches to create quilting lines similar to my sketch above. We were fascinated by the reduction in size of each section after it was pieced and quilted.

Finally, all the quilted sections had to be joined. Mom finished this part of the project for two reasons: first, I had started my inservice week at school, and second, I didn't know how to join quilted panels together. For the sashing she used narrow strips of black and gray fabrics arranged to create a window pane effect.

Everyone at the center was thoroughly pleased with the outcome. They decided it was best to leave the quilt as is and not applique the animal silhouettes as I had proposed. That was fine with me -- while I enjoyed the experience and had a hard time letting go of the quilt, I was glad the project was over! I have TONS of 2" squares left, so someday I will make another watercolor quilt.