Sweet River Studios

I went and picked up the two quilts I entered at the Ohio State Fair on Monday, August 8. I stood in line with about 20 other people, who were also picking up their entries. I got to the head of the line and a lady asked for my last name and I told her "Oliver." She said, "Lisa Oliver?" My immediately thought was, Oh God, she has to tell me a small child had somehow got a slushy through the building and was running and tripped and her bright blue no bright red slushy had landed on my quilt and its ruined! Ruined!  I dreaded confirming my name to her. "Yes," I said hesitantly. Here it comes the big, giant shoe that was about to step out of my nightmares into reality. Remember, wait until you're in the car to cry, I told myself. "Congratulations, your conservation quilt won People's Choice." What? Really? No giant shoe? Awesome! She took my claim tickets and we walked back to the table where my quilts were already bagged. I c...

I posted about the quilt borders a few days ago by accident. I meant to post the center panel part 3 first but oh well. It's okay. Just pretend you didn't read about the borders first. A few months ago, I decided to finish my center panel. I wasn't certain if I was going to thread paint it or not. It's a nice painting and I really didn't want to screw it up because its a really big panel to have to re-create. But all the other animals are thread painted or at least the backgrounds are but I had some reservations about thread painting the rhino. When I used the white ink I had (like for the polar bear) it was a lot more opaque and dried harder than the other inks. So when I tried to thread paint over it it looked like giant holes where punched through the paint which looked really bad. So I avoided thread painting on white areas or ink mixed with white. And the rhino has some white on it and mixed with other colors so I was concerned it was going to look really b...

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.

This portrait of a baby leatherback turtle was really quite easy to get done. I guess because there's not that many colors.  Painting wet sand is not fun either. I had to use a dark brown with yellow and a darker brown. I applied the white and gray for the turtle first then added the yellow/brown for the sand. I then darkened the turtle with black and added some highlights with white.  I used white to add water reflections in the wet sand and that was pretty much it. Not the greatest painting I've done but not bad either.

This portrait painting was fairly quick and easy. Since I'm getting used to working with the inks and figuring out what works and what doesn't, I'm finding painting with them is getting easier. What I have the most trouble with is controlling the wicking or bleeding of the colors into others. So I decided I would put down white first for the bear. The white is much more opaque than the others and I thought the blue would have a hard time wicking into it when it dried.  I mixed some emerald green into the water water and some white into the cerulean blue and got a good mix of aqua blue with areas of depth. And as you can see, the paint goes on much darker or more vibrant and dries a little more even. I added some blueish/gray to the fur, face and ears and darkened the eyes nose/mouth with dark gray and black. Lastly, I added some blue and white rings in the water. This little painting came together in about 4 hours. 

Oddly enough this little portrait came together fairly easily, much to my surprise.  Maybe I'm just getting better at using the inks?  Once again, I started with a rough outline of my animal. In this case a Golden Lion Tamarin. I roughed in his body with yellow and quickly applied an orange getting the colors to bleed together nicely. After letting the first application of color dry, I added more layers of darker orange and a deep red and roughed in the branch. The next layer, I applied a deep blue with hints of purple in the background. I thought this would contrast nicely with the orange/yellow of the tamarin. I also added a gray/tan face, added fur streaks and applied white highlights.

The next animal portrait for my Animal Quilt is the Orangutan. This portrait is making me nervous. Hair/fur is notoriously hard to draw but I'm hoping this little guy's big eyes and cute smile will be the focus not his hair. I started with rough outline of the little Orang. I started painting the background in abstract greens since he lives in the jungle and added the first layer of skin tone. I added body color and added the facial details. Before it just looked a weird skeleton and was starting to get into my head so I had to fix that. I also added the first hints of fur. I kept adding to the facial features highlight and shading and blending over and over. I'm still not happy with the white ink. It either disappears into your fabric or becomes kind dull.  I also added several more colors of the fur from dark brown to orange to even a bright yellow. I'm still not happy with the eyes or the hand but I think he turned out okay.

Last year, I took a portrait class at Quilt Trends with Maria Elkins. If you don't know who Maria is, I'd suggest you take a look at her website mariaelkins.com. She's awesome and all should bow down to her and her craftiness. She taught the class on portraits and showed us her method of making portraits out of fabric. My little giraffe came out pretty cute but the quilting really helped it out giving it some extra details. Here's some before/after pictures. So this was the class that got me thinking about making an animal portrait quilt specifically of endangered animals. At first, I thought I could maybe do them as black/white thread art type pictures but discarded that idea fairly quickly. I can't image working with nothing but black thread on white fabric for literally months on end. Then, I thought I could simply do what I did for the giraffe portrait and use fabric. This wasn't a bad idea but I do want to get it done sometime during my lifetime...