Something old reimagined

I tried replicating the Santa's Sleigh font. It sure doesn't come naturally, pen on paper, that is. I was test-driving my text stitch here using a crewel needle and the full six strands of DMC, doubled. To be fair, the project will have larger size letters. Twice this. Still, it fell clunky and a colossal waste of thread. 

I'll be happier if I lay the text out with my own font (the top photo) - a bastardized slab serif instead of trying to be letter true to Santa's Sleigh. 

Back in the day, I was a font whore.  Snapping up freebies from sketchy warez websites at every opportunity. Probably caught computer cooties more than once that way. 

Then I fell in love with one that had to be purchased. With MONEY. It's called Decoracha. You can see the charm. I think at the time it was only available commercially and for Mac users. I got over it but will refer to certain characteristics of it in my own font whenever spacing calls for flexibility.  I need to sit with a sketch pad and just draw letters for a while before I even think of stitching anything.

Grubbing around in the cloth closet, I found the perfect piece for the project. It's lightweight contemporary linen so I know it is young and strong, still, I'm going to back it with another layer because it's a big project that's going to take a lot of handling. 

This linen was most likely a table mopper. I like the light linen for that because it is as absorbent as paper towels. Then there was some Soft Scrub discharging. I can tell by the blue halos. 

The whole piece of cloth has a mystery touch that suits my purpose of the spell.  

I'm going to do all of this the hard way, starting with ironing a grid into the cloth. 

Letters to words, to sentences. 

All of it's the driving wheel of the writing train. 

You never know what

minutes are going to matter.