My Work as Inspiration - My Sister's Art and Embroidery

For the Easter holiday, my little family got together with my mom, all of my sisters and most of Julia's cousins from my side of the family. It's always fun to see everyone and hear what they are up to. The cousins are getting older - we have one just starting college and a couple in high school. We were lucky to have my mom stay with us for one night and my sister Lynn stay for three nights. Julia loves spending time with her extended family as do I. It's always sad to see everyone leave and go their separate ways.

I've written about my sister Lynn before on this blog - here and here. She's the sister who is the most visually colorful of all of my sisters. She dresses in bright turquoises, fushchia, orange, chartreuse and denim and is always decked out in a colorful costume complete with rings on every finger and piles of necklaces. When we go places together, noone can believe we are sisters. I'm the "Plain Jane" and she's the peacock. I love to hear reactions from people who can't imagine we are related. Julia and Lynn just love to spend time to together. Julia ends up painted up like a peacock - fingernails, toes, lips and eyes. What fun for a little girl.

I taught Lynn to do embroidery a while back - the posts above are about her embroidery technique. Here are a couple of close-ups of embroidery she has done on her jean jackets. She uses 6 strands of cotton embroidery floss, a thimble, and freehands the designs on her jackets with Sharpie markers. Then she fills in the lines with her whimsical colorful stitching style.


This past weekend she told me she has been watching some kind of cable tv channel which is all about art. I don't know what it is called but it sounded quite fun and interesting. She said she has been inspired to start drawing again. We went on a hunt for Prismacolor pencils and charcoal paper which is what she likes to use. I sat there knitting (something for a deadline) and she sat there drawing.

She showed me some of her old drawings and I was bowled over. The last time she was here she photocopied old books of mine and magazines. She has been carrying around these copies and using them as inspiration for her drawings. Here's one of the images she photocopied from the issue of Country Home I was in September of 2004 (you can down-load that article here). The photo is by my friend John Gruen.


Here's the drawing she made from it.


Isn't it just great to see how someone can take an inspiration and turn it into their own art? And isn't it interesting how Lynn's drawings and embroideries are so similar? I thought you all would like to see this bit of creativity considering all the wonderful comments I received during the last day of the giveaway a few weeks ago.

Things remain beyond busy here. Next week is Julia's spring vacation and I'm just about losing my mind trying to pull stuff together. This too shall pass. Hope everyone is enjoying the spring weather. It is absolutely glorious here today.