Horsepower:
Don't Fence
Me In

I won a Blue Ribbon Award for Intrepretation of the Theme at PNQE, Harrisburg PA September 2006.
This quilt was complete in June 2006 as a requirement for my City & Guilds Diploma course. My theme of course is "The Horse". For this quilt my research took me out West, horses in all their glory with multiple colors, shades, and temperaments. These horses are on the move on the range and they don't want to be fenced in.

My original design started with my paper pieced horse heads, topstitched leather completed the manes. Vintage feed sacks, as well as, cotton and linen fabrics were used. Numerous surface treatments were employed including dyeing, discharging, overdyeing, painting, stamping, disperse dyeing and rusting.

In the fence portion there are three gates which swing out with a leather pull and are held shut with copper turns. (Below is first pictured open gates and the second picture depicts closed gates.) Behind the gates, which are embellished with patinated copper and studs, you can find three more treasures - photo stitched embroideries of a belt buckle, boots, and cowboy's hat. These are my originally digitized embroidery designs. The fence was connected to the main quilt with blue jean loops.

It is heavily quilted with machine free motion motifs including horse shoes, swirls, hearts, leaves, lines, flowers, etc. - all inspired from my research. The wood grain quilting on the post follows the flow of the marks, as does much of the quilting on the horse heads. The fence quilting was completed by couching dyed twine. Hand quilting was used around some of the lettering in the feed sacks.

DON'T FENCE ME IN is a 62" by 63" contemporary wall quilt.

Horsepower: Spring Watch
Horsepower: Don't Fence Me In
Belt Buckle photo stitched
Papaer Pieced head, vintage feed sacks
Leather Mane, discharged cotton
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