Ride 'em Cowboy!

My sample replicated fabric swatches for the damaged Horsie quilt arrived from Spoonflower! Most of the files need some tweaking, which is why it's a good idea to order the $5 swatch before you get an $18 yard...

The Horse fabric looks great, but it's too large. I'll shrink the file before ordering more (though actually, I don't really need more of this fabric- the original horsies are in pretty good shape). I knew I'd have to age the fabric. It would have been hard to design age spots printed directly on the fabric.

This print is the right scale but the wrong brown, though it looks okay with most of the quilt (there's lots of that shade in the other fabrics).

The black and red flower print is just about perfect. I will need at least a yard of it because the quilt's creator used this fabric all over on the border, and all of those triangles are deteriorating.

The colors are fine on this print, but YIKES! How did I get it so big? I'll have to shrink it 75% to get it to the proper scale.

For some reason, this print is scaled much better, but it's still too big, by about half.

All of the fabrics (except the black and red) need "stains" and "ageing". I tried tea-dyeing but the not enough of the color absorbed (of course, I want it to stain, so it won't). So I'm going to try coffee next, and maybe a little judicious spillage, just to get that antique look going.

It'll still be awhile before I start repair work in earnest, but Spoonflower has speeded up their turn-around, so I don't think it'll be all that long before I can dig in.