Sweet River Studios

In part 2, I posted a picture of the quilt with a piece of clear vinyl laid on top. I tested out various quilting designs by drawing on it with dry erase markers. Trying to figure out the quilting designs for this quilt has been rather hard. I guess the colored pencil drawings are making it hard. Do I quilt them or not? I'm no longer debating about it. I've decided to quilt the portraits. It'll be a challenge but I think every quilt you do you should give you at least one challenge. So far I've not really had one for this particular quilt so there it is. I just hope I have enough thread colors. I've also added a German Shepard to the quilt. Grandma really, really loved her dog and never got another shepard. She's had other dogs since then but she never talks about them, just her shepard. It's not an exact portrait of her dog but she'll love it just the same. I've been gathering some additional quilting threads this last week and I'm goin...

Well it's taken me forever to continue posting about this quilt. I wanted to add a wash of color to the quilt to soften the glaring white fabric but I lost my inks. I looked for several weeks and had to continue posting about my other applique quilt project in the mean time. That quilt has had a serious set back and I'm really not happy about it or with my self since it was totally my fault. Of course it was my fault! I'm the one making the darn thing. Anyway, I still can't find my inks, so I finally broke down at the end of June and purchased the ink that I know I have lurking in my house somewhere. I'm pleased to say that I got the ink wash on last week. It really helped to blend the colored portraits together. I also got the edges a little darker. When applying the inks, I was trying to only blend so far into the portraits. They have white areas that I did not want to color and if the ink gets to the white area it's not going to come out and it m...

I thought I'd go over the process of making some of the applique pieces for this quilt. I did some testing (see Part 3) and they came out really well and went fairly quickly. Let me tell you though, this process makes a ton of trash! After cutting on the 12x12" mat, you peel off the excess which is trash. Do that to interfacing and the fabric and you can see how this generates a lot of trash but the pattern pieces are getting cut and cut quickly. After scanning the images and importing them into the Silhouette software, I can place them on the 12x12" mat and have the Cameo cut out interfacing or freezer paper backed fabric. You just have to remember that if you're cutting out the fabric to enlarge your pattern piece first so you have plenty of fabric to turn under once the interfacing is ironed on. Once the interfacing was cut out, I did some test pieces by just ironing the interfacing to some fabric and cutting around the shape leaving a generous 1/4...

I've picked my fabric, which I agonized over but won't go into the sad details of that. It's just too embarrassing for me. Anyway, according to the pattern, you need 3 printed fabrics and 7 solid type fabrics. I wanted something bright and colorful so shopped online. I can see a lot more fabrics online than at my local quilt shop but I normally don't like to shop online for fabrics that I have something specifically in mind for like this quilt. I can buy random fabric and make it work for totes or bags but for this I would rather see the fabric in person. When you shop online you can't touch it and you can only HOPE the swatch they show is accurate. I really like the ruler at the bottom of the swatch below. This should show you that what you're seeing is a large square of the fabric. This one happens to be around 17x17" some are 12x12" but you get the idea. You should see some repeat in the swatch so you know that the whole pattern is being shown. ...

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...

We went to the Secretariat festival last year hoping to get my quilt signed by Ron Turcotte and Penny Chenery. Unfortunately, the day we were leaving, the festival posted the Ms. Chenery was sick and wouldn't be there. We went anyway and got the quilt signed by Mr. Turcotte. This year was just the opposite. Ron Turcotte was injured earlier this year in a car accident and was unable to attend. I went online and pre-purchased an autograph token for Ms. Chenery. You pay a little more but everything goes to support various charity organizations, so I don't mind. This also puts you in line first. You don't have to wait in line with the masses. We got to the event at 9:00 a.m., and we saw the Superman Secretariat statue they had out front, which was new from last year. It was too cute and silly for words and I had to have a picture of it. I went into the building where all the signed merchandise and memorabilia is and got my token. I was amazed to find out that was #1. ...

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.

This painting of a panda came together quickly and I was able to control most of the bleeding.  I first painted the white areas of the panda, then a I added a gray to the black areas. I let that dry and added the background and gray rock the panda is on. I did have some bleeding but I don't think its that noticeable. After everything dried, I went back over my gray areas with black, added dark green veins to the leaves and added fur. My brush really did all the work. Its quite frayed for lack of a better term and is all different lengths which creates a more streaky brush stroke.  I really like how this one turned out.

The next animal in my endangered species quilt is the Hyacinth Macaw. This beautiful bird is a rich, deep blue color and I was worried I wouldn't be able to capture it well with the inks I have. I have one bright blue color. That's it and I could see at least 4 shades of blue so I worried weather or not I'd be able to capture it correctly. I started with the background first. I think the blue bird intimidated me. I chose greens and yellows since they live in tropical areas and filled the areas with long streaking motions. I also filled in the tree limb with a shade of brown. Then I generally filled in the bird with blue color not really paying any attention to shades/highlighted areas. The pictures show more darker blues and even a deep purple blue on the bird as well as more tree limb definition. Then I added some highlights and yellow around the eye and bill. Now, I had a major problem. Gray from the beak bled into the yellow area and the yellow ink is...

I admit I've been bad.  I haven't posted in weeks. After putting some of the rows together for this quilt and fighting a lot with it, I've taken a break from my quilt and yesterday I took my machine in for an cleaning.  So let me tell you how I started putting these blocks together. First, I started with my sashing.  All the sashing does is hide the seams from sewing the blocks together. When I was picking my fabric, I admit I just didn't care what my sashing looked like at this point, so its the same fabric as the backing.  To make the sashing, I used 1.5" strips x width of fabric and folded each side in towards the middle about 1/4" towards the middle and ironed. The ends are not quite to the center which is fine. I still don't have all the inner/outer border blocks done yet but I did start putting some of the rows together.  I used an all cotton thread to sew the blocks together.  Just line up what designs you can (assuming there are any) and...