Greetings everybody! We had hoped to accomplish more this weekend but we are still behind on some home maintenance projects that needed tending. Cameron spent all day retrofitting the openings for the air vent covers and they look MARVELOUS in my opinion. Here are some photos:

We still have a bunch to go but they’ll all be the same design. Cameron is trying to figure out the best way to approach the vents in the hardwood flooring. I know this looks simple but it turns out that all of these openings are different on the inside which makes installation uh, adventurous??? Cameron bought metal frames to put in the openings of the ones you see installed so the magnets would work. He spent a lot of time applying layers of paint and sanding in between to achieve a nice smooth, glossy finish that will be easy to clean (that’s key).

So last week I did the abstraction of I Dream of Jeannie’s bottle, but I had some scraps left over. Anyone who knows me knows I hate to waste anything so, I challenged myself to make something from them.

You’d have to zoom in to see how heavy all of the decorative stitching is; this measures 18” square and has almost six spools of thread in it. Not small spools either. In the end it is more fiber art than anything else. It took about 35 hours to complete; once I got going with the decorative stitching I really liked the added texture and dimensionality it added. I’m calling it Pastiche because I took inspiration from my friend Mindy who is the queen of decorative stitching and my friend Gail who told me to keep going yesterday afternoon before I had all of the strips sewn down. In addition to inspiration from another piece I did a long time ago I thought of the Chaos menu on the HULU series, The Bear so it is indeed a pastiche!

We are both a little disappointed not to have gotten the chance to experiment with acrylic and resin this weekend but, I’m hoping next weekend holds more discovery/adventure on the laser for us!