Sweet River Studios

Have you ever just thought something simple like, "I really should fix that little hole in the drywall in the bathroom," or "I should just get X done and it'll look nicer" type of thoughts not knowing that one small little thing leads to a complete room remodel? Let me tell you how mine started.... When we first built our house 20 years ago, we skimped on several things to make sure our payment didn't skyrocket. Some upgrades I regret not getting but hey, that was 20 years ago. So when we were specking out our master bathroom, we didn't add a double bowl or a extra cabinet under the counter. Well, now it appears that without the full cabinets holding up the counter, the counter has started sagging and therefore pulling away from the wall, which has torn up the current paint job and it looks bad. And in order to fix said sag, we need another cabinet, which we can't find one that fits the current space and trying to repaint the custom paint...

Another year has passed and for me it was a fairly quiet one. We didn't go on vacation and I'm pretty sure I sewed less this year than last year and I definitely posted less. I had around 30 blog posts from bluebirds to quilts to cooking classes. There were no anniversary parties this year but I did take my grandmother to OSU Orton Museum to speak with someone about her rock collection. My grandmother is 89 and fondly remembers the time she spent traveling out west with her husband in the 1980's. During their traveling she picked up rocks from all the states they visited and they came back with the trunk full. It's a wonder they didn't break the car she has so many rocks. She loves her rocks but she doesn't really know what type of rock they are and some are very unique. She's wanted to go over her rock collection with a geologist for years and often spoke of inviting someone from OSU to her house to see her rock collection. Now that she's 89 and fee...

The fall horse was more difficult to paint than the other two but I think I did okay. I put fall colored leaves, flowers and grapes on vines around the legs and I might add more on the skin of the horse. I also started the summer horse. I went with a black horse with blueish highlights and I'll probably add sunflowers and butterflies on it and maybe some cracked parched earth under it's hooves. I took about 2 weeks off from painting to take a break from it but hopefully, I'll start the background area soon then onto the quilting.

Painting the horses continue. There's a lot of detail work on the Spring and Fall horses with a lot of vines, leaves, flowers etc. so that's more detailed and very slow going but I'm making progress. When I'm tired of working on the small intricate areas, I started working on painting the fall horse so I can go back to painting a large area. I don't have the hooves or mane painted yet and no highlights but at least it looks like a horse.

I spent several days drawing leaves, vines, flowers, ice crystals and whatever else I could dream up on the horses using Frixion pens. They erase with heat so when I make a mistake or want to change something I just iron it away and start over. I waffled a while on whether or not I would quilt the horses first then paint or paint first then quilt. So it took me a while to get started but I went with paint first. I started with the Winter horse first, mainly since its the first horse from the right and rest of the quilt is rolled up onto a cardboard tubing. I decided to paint it gray with some kind of icicles coming up from the hoof landing on the ground. But for now, just trying to get the horses done and you know, looking like horses. The second horse in the Spring horse and I decided to make it a palomino color which is a golden color with white mane/tail. Since white on white fabric never really shows up, I went ahead and added some gray to help it stand out. This horse...

Yes! I've started my 4 horses art quilt. I've made some additional decisions since my last post so here they are. I bought 4.5 yards of PFD (prepared for dyeing) fabric. This fabric hasn't been treated with any stabilizers and I've not washed it. The fabric is supposed to hold onto paints/dyes really well. I didn't wash it but I did throw it into the dryer on the refresh cycle so a little steam was added but that was it. I created my own image of four horses and projected it onto the fabric and made an outline of the horses. I decided to make the horses realistic in coloring and decorate each one with seasonal themes. So for example, I decided the Spring horse will be a palomino color with white mane/tail and then I'll decorate the horse with flowers, leaves, ribbons and whatever else I can come up with. I might applique them on or just quilt them. I'm not sure about that yet. I'll probably take some scrap fabric and do some experimenting and see w...

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."...

Welcome to 2016! I started this blog in April of 2015 and had 68 posts for the year. I wanted to have a record of what I'd had done all year (minus 3 months) and write about it. The good, the bad and the ugly. And I didn't post as much as a I could simply because I'm not in a race with anyone. Most of my posts were about sewing/quilting, my in-laws 50th Anniversary party, some dog activities and some recipes. I assume 2016 will be much of the same. So let's get to it! This year, is my parents 50th Anniversary in June but they don't want a party. We have a very small family and they don't have a lot of friends so a party with 15 people is fairly pointless. So I thought I'd try to make them a keepsake wall quilt type thing. Since I just finished painting my endangered animal quilt, I figured I could paint a picture of them from their wedding day or maybe do a fabric portrait of them. Either one would probably work and I might do both to see which one I l...

I have completely forgotten the name of this little frog. Golden Mantra is sticking in my head but I guess it doesn't matter. I worked on the background first and then the frog.  I had some slight bleeding into the background but I'm not sure I care. This little frog was pretty easy to do and its a decent painting but I just don't think this one is doing anything for me. I was going for some diversity in my quilt but I may have to find another animal to paint.

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 painting came together fairly easily. I'm always leery of painting black animals. It can be really hard to distinguish the actual shape of the animal. All that black can lead to just one giant blob of mystery. But I made sure to leave a white highlight down the shoulder and arm which I think really helped. I added some gray/white to the body area and flicked my brush to leave the directional lines which took on the fur. I added gray to the face and white to the arm, head, chest to highlight the black fur. Since gorilla's live in the jungle, I added some tree shapes and greens to the background.

Well, I haven't painted any animals for a few weeks now. I got hung up and couldn't decide a few things. I decided to add a lowland gorilla and maybe a manatee but I haven't decided.  I did discover a cute bird called a Quetzal and I'm thinking I'll add that to the border but back to the harpy eagle. Since this bird lives in the deep jungle, I went for the darkest shade of green I had and painted the background and a branch and let this layer dry. I used gray, white and a dark midnight blue to initially rough in the bird. Finally, I used black to darken areas and white for additional highlighting.  I also added some leaf shapes and squiggly yellow. Not sure why but it needed something to break up all that green and yellow peaks through green in the jungle and it just seemed to work out. Its about the animal not the backgrounds and I think this eagle turned out pretty good.