I get by with a little help from my friends

April 17, 2021 ~ Liz A ~ 20 Comments

Somewhere along the way, Nancy and I discovered a mutual admiration of Brian Andreas and his Story People creations from the 1990s (more recently, he and his first wife split up, which sadly muddied the artistic waters).

Anyway, our exchange started when I sent Nancy a Story People card and then she sent me a Story People book (among other things, but that’s another post).

Today, I gathered stuff together to celebrate the arrival of Nancy’s gifts on April 1st …

Chief among them was a scrap of Tina’s dye cloth and a deconstructed sheer cotton skirt that was among my very first thrift store purchases inspired by Spirit Cloth 101.

I sketched directly on the cloth …

then skatched on bits of skirt cloth a la Jude Hill, along with a fair bit of split backstitch lettering worked in Deb Lacativa threads.

And I know one shouldn’t show favoritism, but honestly, I especially like this patch …

That’s a wrap … or is that a warp?

April 16, 2021April 16, 2021 ~ Liz A ~ 15 Comments

While I was in St Louis, I bought an egg spinning kit for Jace and Jackson at Target. Meliss waited until it was closer to Easter before turning them loose and then called on Facetime so I could see them in action …

Luckily I had the perfect thrift store cloth match for an egg patch.

With the month of a March finally done and stitched onto the January and February patches, I discovered a problem: the cloth was warped, visibly wider at the bottom than the top row of black and white patches.

Thinking it might help, I made a new row of black and white patches the same size as the top row and eased (well actually, forced) everything together …

But it was obvious that the March patches were buckling, plus the new row of black and white patches was stretched beyond reasonable.

I took them all apart and found my eyes hadn’t been lyin’ …

I think this could best be called mission creep. So it’s back to the drawing board to do a little what-iffing 😉

Almost there …

April 14, 2021 ~ Liz A ~ 14 Comments

March 29, 2021 – Michael’s — March 30, 2021 – Pencil Day

I used to get Target gift cards to send to the grandkids on holidays, but it occurred to me this time around that gift cards from an art supply store would be a better idea. So I headed over to the nearest Michael’s and stocked up. Then printed out some Easter cards to put them in …

However, I did edit the text on Logan’s card to read “just hop in your car and drive over to Michael’s!”

The gift cards reminded me of some linen that I used too clean my paintbrush during an Inktense experiment. The experiment was a bust, but the cleaning rag was a keeper. Better yet, it paired beautifully with Deb Lacativa’s dyed threads …