At Christmas, my entire family isn't able to get together all at the same time due to distance and other family obligations. Our little family does the trip to NJ and there we see Mom, sister Jenn, and sister Lynn and her two boys Nicholas and Francisco who travel all the way from Brazil to be with us. The boys are on their "summer break" so they stay in the States for about six weeks. Last weekend, we were lucky to have the boys from Brazil, their mom Lynn, and our mom Mum come and visit our house on Friday night. Julia and I joined them in visiting sister Nancy and her three girls in NH for a second sleepover, and then spent a third sleepover at sister Laurie's and her two girls in eastern MA. What fun - a giant traveling sleepover. Everyone had a blast. I feel so lucky that we had that time together without the stress of the holidays. Because Julia is an "only" I always try to have her get together with her cousins as much as possible.
All the sisters got a chance to catch up as did the cousins. It seems that someone is always making something - either cooking or baking or sewing. I spent the weekend working on a felted bag for an upcoming book and my sister Lynn continued with her ongoing embroidery project - decorating her jean jackets until they are covered with stitches.I wrote a little about Lynn back in the beginning of July. For her living, she sells cosmetics - she's the glamourous one! She has always dabbled in painting and is very colorful herself. The needlearts are not something that come naturally or easy to her. That's why we were all astounded at the dedication she is putting into these jean jackets. They are totally amazing. Here she is stitching away. She uses embroidery floss - all 6 strands at a time. She draws designs onto the denim herself and then she just stitches away - doing mostly chain stitch but creating the most colorful and creative art. I just in awe of them. Here's Nancy's daughter Celia in one of the jackets.
Maybe a floss company will notice them one day! Find more photos here of close-ups of the embroidery on the Colorful Stitchery Stitchalong.
And at the same time, check out what others are doing - there was definitely a lot of stitching going on for the holidays - it is so exciting to see people posting their projects on the Stitchalong. We all would love to have more members - so don't be shy!
6 comments:
Beautiful designs and work. What a talente family, you all are!
This reminds me of a book I have called Native Funk and Flash. It's from the late 60's/early 70's, I believe and is filled with the handmade things, mostly sewn and embroidered of people in and around San Francisco at that time. There's even some pictures of Laurel Burch and some of her early jewelry pieces.
I've been meaning to scan some pictures and blog about that book for awhile now. Maybe sometime sooner than later.
Sorry for the poor grammar! Oh my.
Hi Kristin! What beautiful jackets! Isn't it fun to see how the creative gene in a family expresses itself in different folks? My sis does drafting and does wonderful things with wood. I thought it was funny how we both ended up in architecture, she with buildings and me with sweaters.
Happy Day! Celeste
Thanks so much for the inspiration! I have a pretty blah denim jacket with machine embroidered hem and cuffs and your blog inspired me to embellish it with embroidery. I put some photos on my blog.
The photos of your sisters jackets take me back to my highschool days in the 70s. We embellished our jeans and jackets with tons of embroidery. My favorite jeans featured lots of satin stitch images with very kitschy mushrooms,ferns,daisies and ladybugs. I hung on to them for years, but finally got rid of them. This post makes me wish I still had them, but alas, they would not fit anymore! These photos make me want to dig out my floss and do some stitching.
Hello, I found you on someone elses blog site - what a fabulous idea. I'd love to have a go at decorating a denim jacket but it will probably take me ages to do.
Lovely blog.
Best wishes Ginny
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