Sweet River Studios

After getting the rhino and grasses finished for the center panel, I started working on my tree.  I drew only one limb, a few branches and leaves and the tree trunk.  I quilted the outside lines first then I started in the center of the tree and stitched some curvy lines up and down the tree trunk. Then I continued with wavy lines out the branch. I plan on making some more branches so my tree will look more like a tree. I also want my tree branches to be outside the center panel and out into the sashing areas so that the tree will look much closes to the viewer and give it some "pop." After doing the initial quilting, I colored the tree with my Inktense pencils and the color goes on looking darker since its wet, which is fairly misleading as to what your going to wind up with. I felt the colors were too light and didn't vary in intensity at all, so I went back in with the Tsukineko inks and darkened some areas which really helped. My tree also looks pr

All the 10x10" animal squares for the quilt are done. I just have to figure out how much/little to quilt them. I've been working on the center panel quilting/painting the tree and leaves but that's for another post. The borders of the quilt are 10" wide and I was going to paint them and include some plants, flowers, animals and maybe an insect or two. I wanted to include the Quetzal bird because he's really colorful and I doubt many people have even heard of it. So I went ahead and painted it. The painting looks okay but this little guy looks more iridescent and the paint just didn't capture his brilliant plumage. So, I decided to try to thread paint it using embroidery thread. I tried to match the colors to what I had in the way of thread and started with a zig zag line in the different areas to stabilize it a bit. I don't have any stabilizer ironed to the back of this and I probably should have.  I started with the yellow a

I have to admit I really like how this one turned out.  I was thinking "oh good lord another gray blob to paint and have to make it look good" so needless to say I wasn't thinking this would turn out well. And since the manatee lives in tropical water, I went for aqua blues and greens for the background.  I started by roughly outlining the animal in gray and adding darker grays and some browns for shading. I kept adding darker colors to add shape to the animal and white to highlight skin folds and sunlight. The background looked kinda drab so I added some water leafy things to add interest. Overall, it definitely looks like a manatee enjoying a swim.