Sea Horses by Jennifer Riefenberg

The inspiration for this piece came from my 12-year old niece, Drew, with a statement that stitching is for “…little, old ladies.” Drew is a horse lover and I wanted to create a piece that didn’t exactly fit into her statement. My imagination kind of took over while doing this piece and I envision the creation of a herd of horses – of different colors and patterns, etc., kind of like the “Trail of Painted Ponies” series from the New Mexico Public Art Effort. I have also created “A Gift Horse” which is a smaller version and looks like a wrapped Christmas package and is suitable for hanging as an ornament.

I have coupled the stitched piece with it’s predecessor/fabric model and named the pair “Sea Horses” as the blue swirls remind me of water and the beautiful, swirling undersea.

The piece is worked on painted congress cloth and with silk, cotton, metallic, and synthetic (e.g., Accentuate) fibers and some glass beads. The mane and tail are made from various knitting yarns.