Sweet River Studios

River and I attended a C-WAGS Scent Trial on April 13 and April 20, at Anything Goes for Dogs in Marysville, Ohio. Both nights, there were 2 trials at levels 3 & 4 each. I signed River up for level 4 only but I wound up signing up for one level 3 trial each night. On April 13, she got 1 Q at level 3 and 1 at level 4.  She did really well the first level 3 search but the first level 4 search, she got 3 of the 4 scents. I think she got frustrated because she just started batting around the boxes and alerting when the scent wasn't there but she got one of the scents that was about 3 feet off the ground. The second search she did really well but a train came through the area and she was a bit nervous and stopped searching. I finally got her searching again and she found the last scent. The Level 4 searches were fairly hard. A lot of the shorter dogs had never scented anything 3 feet in the air before but that height is within the rules. On April 20, River was entered in 1 l...

I found a great book called Applique Mastery by Philippa Naylor. In it, she throughly goes over her techniques for applique and her pattern for her quilt called Bird by Bird. I admit, I don't usually follow a pattern exactly unless its making a tote or bag or something and I kinda have to for it to turn out. I simply mean that where a pattern says use X color or X shape, I probably won't. I'll change little things making them more mine so by the time I'm done, I doubt my quilt will look exactly like hers. And that's okay. The quilt has a lot of applique pieces. Hence the title applique mastery. No I didn't count all the pieces but clearly there are a several hundred or more in this 74x74" quilt. If I would use a pair of scissors to cut all the interfacing pieces and fabric pieces and do it all by hand, I would be dead by the time it all got cut out let alone sewn down. So, that's where my handy Cameo Silhouette comes in. I bought one to cut ou...

I finished the 50th Anniversary quilt for my parents in February and I've taken a few weeks off to think about my next art quilt project. I usually find inspiration by picking a subject first, then I consider what else I can put on the quilt. I decided my next subject would be my grandmother. She will be 88 in April and she's my last remaining grandparent. She's a really kind woman and I'm glad she's been in my life so I thought I'd do something special. Since I made a colored pencil portrait of my parents, I thought I'd do the same for this quilt. So I went through all the family photos and picked a few pics of my grandma that looked nice. I picked one from when she was a teenager, one with her holding a great-grandchild and one with her with some flowers she got on Mother's Day. Grandma loves birds, flowers, Ohio State football, has no sweet tooth to speak of, has always weighed 127 lbs. her entire life and loves everyone she meets. Since I can...