Sweet River Studios

My husband and I have been married for 20 years now. We got married in 1996 on October the 5th and believe me it really doesn't seem like it's been 20 years. We don't travel much. We've gone on a cruise to the Caribbean, Las Vegas, DC, Hawaii and now Key West, FL. Seems pretty sad that we've gone to 5 places in 20 years but there you have it. I decided that our 20th should be spent somewhere else besides home. We wrestled around with a few places and decided to go to Key West. I've heard that Key West is pretty much like any other tropical island in the Caribbean but close to get to and you don't need a passport or have to live on a plane for 12 hours. Hawaii, I love you but that flight sucks. I'm glad we honeymooned there but I probably won't be going back. I can find sand elsewhere. So we booked our anniversary week, October 1 - 7, at the Tropical Inn off of Duval in the heart of Key West. We arrived in Key West, FL about 6 hours late due to ...

I bit the bullet and decided to enter these two quilts in the Ohio State Fair. I've never entered a quilt show before so I pretty much know next to nothing about entering. All I do know is that some are juried and some are not. The Ohio State Fair is not juried. I believe all entries are accepted until they fill their space for each class but I don't really know. I figured, why not? I think my two quilts are fairly unique. I know my sewing isn't the greatest. Not every seam is a perfect 1/4" no matter how hard I try but considering I didn't know what a 1/4" seam was until 6 years ago, I think I'm doing pretty good. I'm not too concerned about winning a ribbon for either of these. This is me just dipping my toe into these waters and basically saying, "See? I entered quilts to the fair and I can scratch that off my bucket list." And I didn't hyperventilate once while they were out of my possession and my control! So if you get a...

My parents 50th anniversary is June 18. Last year was my in-laws anniversary and we had a nice catered party with a 4 tiered cake that I worked my backside off preparing. My family on the other hand is small. Even with all the cousins we only number about 14 people and my parents don't get out and don't have any friends. I've asked my parents several times what they wanted to do for their 50th and they always say "nothing" so I haven't really planned anything. My grandmother on the other hand is a different matter. She knows my parents want nothing for their anniversary but she doesn't believe that includes having cake and ice cream. And it got me thinking... There's been a cake decorating technique I've wanted to try and it seems like a good opportunity to try it out and there's a cake recipe that I found that I think my parents will really like. So I thought I'd combine the two. First the decorating technique. I found this video of...

After quilting the background, I selected the border I thought would look best and got sewing. But I wanted a mitered border, which I've never done before. I watched several YouTube videos and of course they always make it sound really, really, easy and never once to they say "don't do X because then it won't work" or "watch out for Y." No. They simply say, "See its easy!" No. No it isn't. Mitered Corners The first step to mitered corners is marking your center panel. Mark 1/4" away from your corners in every direction. Sew your borders on the panel starting and stopping at the 1/4" marks. Once you get all 4 sides done, your borders will NOT be sewn down in the corners. All the borders are floppy and weird at this point. Lay all your borders flat out so that they overlap (sorry, I don't have a picture). Mark with a pen, on each fabric with a  little dot, where the two borders intersect. Next, fold your center panel...

I decided the open space area above mom's head needed some quilting. I didn't want to have too much quilting but I wanted to fill the space. The people will not be quilted. I decided that I didn't want to mess anything up and taking the plunge to quilt even the empty space was making me nervous. I've put a lot of work into the portrait and I don't want to ruin it. I thought a large 50 should go into the corner but what else? I had no idea and after looking through some quilting books to get ideas, I thought I'd use the Ohio quilt block pattern, which to me looks just like a star so I thought I could work with that. I got my projector out and got to work. Using the projector simply helps with placement and keeping things straight, which most people can't do freehand. So after I got them roughed in so to speak, I needed to fill the spaces in between. I didn't just want to do a meander stitch all over because I wanted a bit more of a design. So when ...

It took me a  while to figure out which 2 fabrics I wanted to border the portrait. I thought that since the center is a light colored fabric that I would have a small border (1") in brown then another (2") border in a lighter color after that making the center square 21". I also wanted mitered corners. I have never done mitered border corners but it doesn't seem all that hard and I always like to throw in an element that I don't know how to do. But before I get to the borders, I need to work on that lovely background. It's not a huge area to try to quilt and I may not wind up doing it at all but its seems like there should be something. Border Fabric My MIL and I went to our local quilt shop looking for fabric to put around the portrait. I wanted a small 1/2" - 1" darker fabric around the portrait and a lighter 2-2.5" fabric around that but they both had to work with the cream/applique blocks and the portrait. Picking out fabric...

Now that my practice piece is finished, I can move onto wall quilt. I didn't want to do a huge center portrait but I didn't want something super small either. So I settled on 18x18" but the applique blocks I want to put around the center portrait, can be done in 6" or 7". The 6" block says "finishes at 7" but 7 doesn't go into 18 evenly. Starting to see the problem? Of course you are! So that means the blocks have to either finish at 6 (which goes into 18 nicely) or I have to add a border around the portrait and end up with say 21, which 7 goes into. So I thought I'd add a mitered border (which I've never done before) around the center to add 3" making my center 21" square. Background Squares I also stitched out some embroidered background squares from the Feathered Star pattern, which came out really well. I stitched out 2 blocks. On the left, the thread is a very close match to the cream fabric and the one on the rig...

After I got the backgrounds painted on my portraits, I decided to take my practice portrait and try to put a light wash of black on dad's jacket so the pencil lines would blend in a bit more. That went horribly wrong. I had black ink seep into the bride's veil and into the white collar and in his boutonniere. I also added tulle to the veil and thread painting to the dress.  After all that, I don't think it really did anything for the picture, which was a bit surprising for me. I also forgot to fix the neckline of the dress. I needed to find the center and flip the left side to the right to make it even. I could only see one side in the picture and forgot to make the other side the same. Again, I'm glad this one is just practice. I also started to define the tiara on mom's head piece. The picture basically showed a white blob. There was no definition whatsoever and I had a hard time seeing even the basic shape. So I basically made it up using seed beads. This was...

I haven't done any portrait work in a really long time and I'm glad some of the things I learned came roaring back to me as I worked on these. I did this picture using nothing but colored pencil and it turned out well since I had a bit of practice on the first 2. This one is much better looking and is a fairly good likeness. I think it'll get a bit better after I get the white veil/dress/tiara and the background tinted. Dad doesn't look quite so alien like, which is always a bonus! The streaky look of the color pencils though are really bothering me. Especially in dad's black jacket. I'll continue trying to smooth those out and if that doesn't help then I may put on a light wash of black ink to try to smooth it out. Unfortunately, dad's mouth/lip area isn't all that good but it looks fairly accurate compared to the picture. I think it was a perfect storm so to speak. He's leaning slightly towards mom, head turned towards the camera, ...