Hi, I’m Becka.
I’m an artist who explores ideas through paper, fiber, pattern, and technology. My favorite projects usually start with curiosity and end somewhere I wasn’t expecting. I enjoy exploring new techniques, combining ideas from unexpected places, and seeing what happens when I follow a question instead of a plan.
I share that process through my artwork, writing, and teaching because I think creativity is more fun when it’s shared. I believe that seeing the whole creative process—the experiments, the successes, the failures, the art, the business, and everything in between—makes makes trying something new feel a little more possible.
Curiosity is contagious. I hope you find something here that inspires you to follow your own.
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Studio Journal
My Arch Nemesis: Being an Artist in the AI Era
AI has come up in a lot of conversations in the last few weeks. I put a tiny sign on my vendor table at the show that said “No AI” and I am almost certain it is the most read and most reacted-to sign I have ever posted. I got a lot of high fives. A few evenings ago, I sat on a panel titled “Creativity in the Age of AI” and described AI as “my arch nemesis”. When I applied to be a “Trusted Vendor” on Fybe.art, one of the criteria they asked for was a public statement about AI. I have had a “No AI” line on my site and my shops for quite a while but I thought it was maybe worth talking about a little more.
The arch nemesis
So why do I call it my arch nemesis? When I said that I was thinking about one specific story. Almost a year ago, I had been having issues with my website hosting. I had switched to a new web host several years ago and it was fine, but the cost kept going up. I had constant trouble with the site being flagged for being over bandwidth and visitor [read more…]
Embroidery Tip: Variegated Thread vs Tweeded Thread
When I am designing embroidery projects, I am always thinking: what can I do that isn’t flowers? There’s nothing wrong with flowers, but there are a lot of designs out there that are just pretty florals and I get bored stitching them. So when I taught the woven wheel stitch to my embroidery class, I wanted us to make something that wasn’t a rose. So I came up with a turtle shell! You can learn how to stitch this tiny turtle on lilypad coasters in my Tiny Turtle Coasters Tutorial that is up at Benzie Design.
In the photo above there are two slightly different variations of that turtle and I thought it was a great opportunity to talk about variegated threads because I think that’s a great choice for this turtle shell. The one on the left, I stitched with a commercially dyed variegated thread. I think it’s DMC color called Kismet. I used all 6 strands of embroidery floss to do the woven wheel stitch.
The version on the right I stitched for the Benzie Design tutorial. They don’t carry variegated colors of DMC, and I wanted to create a similar color effect, so instead I combined three different colors [read more…]
Product Review: Benzie Design Stuffing Tool
As a part of the Benzie Design Maker Team this year, they have sent me a couple of boxes of craft supplies. It has all been beautiful and so fun to discover some new things. In this latest package, they included one of their stuffing tools. To be honest, I am glad that it said what it was on the package because this is the kind of tool that you run across in a sewing box and then post about on Facebook to say “does anybody know what this thing is?”
I don’t think I ever would have ordered one for myself, because who thinks of searching for a stuffing tool? I use a chop stick or a knitting needle or a pair of forceps. Which all work basically fine. But since I had it, I pulled it out the other day to give it a try.
The tool’s end is only about as big around as a bamboo skewer and it has notches cut so it looks like a plus sign if you look at it from the end. It seems really simple. But here’s the surprise: it really works!
[read more…]
Blackwork isn’t just black and white
I just wrapped up teaching the Zoom version of my Modern Blackwork Embroidery Sampler class. We had such fun stitching it and for my group who have been meeting together weekly for several years now, this project had a unique challenge: counting.
So a little here’s a little history lesson. Blackwork has been around for a long time. The version you see if you Google the words “blackwork embroidery” was popular in the English Renaissance, although similar kinds of counted-thread embroidery were being done in other parts of the world much earlier. Traditionally, it was black silk thread on off-white linen, and it was often used on clothing, especially places like collars and cuffs. The reason it was specific to those parts of garments is because the traditional stitch, called the Holbein or double running stitch, is reversible. Since you can often see both sides of the fabric on collars and cuffs, that meant your stitching looked good no matter which side you were seeing.
A lot of the early designs were geometric and floral, which makes sense when you’re stitching on an even-weave fabric that gives you a built-in grid. It’s a pretty good setup for crisp geometrics and repeating patterns. [read more…]
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