As a child, Gina Branstetter loved listening to her father's stories about his childhood when wild horses roamed free in the mountains near their Pendleton, Oregon, home. The quiltmaker says, "I always wanted to make a quilt honoring my father. I have a picture of him on the set of the 1953 movie The Great Sioux Uprising, riding my mother's horse, Slowpoke. Slowpoke loved to run. Unfortunately, he ran too fast and their scenes were edited out of the movie."
Gina's guild is called the Krazy Horse Quilters, spelled with a K to show that they mean no disrespect to the great chief Crazy Horse. Members of the group designed the border, made the pieced stars, and helped her finish the 93" x 93" piece just in time for the group's quilt show. See Extra Credit for information about the people who helped.
Gina Branstetter created a fabric scroll to accompany The Sun Sets on My Father's Horses and tell the quilt's story.
This quilt was inspired by our show titled "The Krazy Horse Quilters" and by the stories my father (Lawrence Picard) told of the days when wild horses roamed free in our mountains and the surrrounding areas. I've always loved our mountains and hearing about my father's childhood and the "days of when... " He was seven years old when his uncle Ralph gave him his first horse and told him that he had to break Dandy by himself. As a youngster my father got to ride in the wild horse roundups. I always wanted to make a quilt honoring my father's stories and this picture of him in 1958 during the filming of the movie The Great Sioux Uprising.
This picture recalls the stories of the last wild horse roundup my father went on, up Squaw Creek. My mother was the head cook for that roundup and was given the first pick of the horses gathered up at this roundup. The one she chose, shown here, was the one my father rode in The Great Sioux Uprising. Its name was Slowpoke but he was by no means slow. My father said Slowpoke loved to run and always tried to outrace the other horses. Therefore, Slowpoke ran too fast in the take shots for the movie, and he was edited out of the film.
This quilt was also inspired by our Krazy Horse Quilters' Quilt Show and how we came about the name for the group. We would like our show to become a regional quilt show someday, involving all the quilters and guilds in our area, so we wanted a show name that represented our town as well as the surrounding areas. Since wild horses roamed free throughout this side of our state, we chose Wild Horses and since we who put on the show are crazy about quilting, we put the two together. A K replaced the C so as not to show any disrespect to the great chief Crazy Horse. We also wanted to honor all the Indian people of our area and the wild horse roundups.
This quilt helped promote our quilt show. I designed and pieced the center of the quilt with inspiration from Cynthia England's book Picture Piecing (England Design Studio, 2002). It's a wonderful book that shows you how to design your own picture quilts. The mountain section of the quilt has 1,100-1,200 pieces; I gave up counting after 1,000. My friend Tina Wetherell came to my rescue and helped applique some of the horses since I was running out of time before the show's entry deadline. In the meantime, I left the border of the quilt up to Colleen Blackwood. She designed the beautiful red border that highlights the center of the quilt perfectly. She organized our Krazy Horse Quilters into making the 38 stars. After the top was complete, the quilt was given to Becky Sorn to add the thread art and quilt it. Becky added the manes and tails and the snow being kicked up by the horses. The quilting was finished on Friday, May 14, 2004, at 9:30 am. My friends did the binding so I could take the class with our featured quilter, June Jaeger-Lindsey, who must take some credit for this quilt. It was she who showed me how to even dream of designing a quilt like this. Thank you, June!
