Sweet River Studios

I like making quilts with patterns and I recently purchased a paper piecing pattern called Paradise in Bloom by Judy Niemeyer. I haven't even selected fabric for that one yet but I will. It's early stages for this quilt but I'm hoping to start it soon. Lately, I've been feeling the need to start another art quilt. I like the freedom of no pattern. It's mine and I can do what I want with it using whatever technique I want to try out. I've been thinking that I'd make something to do with horses. I originally thought I'd make a quilt featuring carousel horses using the four seasons as a theme. Then I got to thinking that maybe I'll just use real horses instead but I haven't really decided. A picture in my brain is starting to form and it's looking more and more like real horses that are running. And big. Did I mention that? Like 45x120" big. Like scary big. Then the artist part of my brain scoffs and says, "Go big or go home."...

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 ...