Susan Schweikhart

I decided to try decolorant ( a type of discharge paste) again.  I used it during the summer but with little success.  Can't just discard it with only one try, so I pulled out dark hand-dyed fabrics and some stencils and tried again.
These worked very well.  The fabric didn't discharge to white, but that wasn't whaat I wanted anyway....

The top is finished, now comes the quilting.  This is always the hardest part for me.  The decisions for quilt designs are overwhelming and as I look at the quilt, I freeze.
I'm trying a wool batting.  I never used this before but have heard good things.  I started in the center and outlined all the "trees" and their shadows and put in branches.  The I quilted in some deciduous trees, then stippled the background....

During the summer I sun-printed a leaf forest using different hues of browns and brownish greens. Wasn't sure how I was going to use it at the time, but thought that it came out interesting.
Later in the fall, I sun-printed some 11" blocks with same or similar leaves but used bright hues of yellow/orange, yellow/green, red, green, red/violet, and purple.  Wasn't sure how I would use these either....

After machine quilting the background with a pantograph for the sky and a grid for grass, I got to work on the stone house.
I decided to use Texture Magic to make the stones 3 dimensional.  I drew the stones onto the Texture Magic then layered light weight batting, then fabric on top, turned it over so Texture Magic was on top and stitched the design.  Now the magic!  With...