Patterns: Cute

Cute - tagged baby blanket by Stitchalicious

Any little person under this baby blanket is going to be one seriously funky little person. This was stitched up by Stitchalicious aka Jacinta Lodge, you can read more about it on her blog or find the cross stitch pattern in her Etsy shop here.

Manbroidery!

Hey people, sorry to have disappeared for a while. Life sorta got in the way. Y'all know what that's like, eh? ;-)

Well, a little while ago I stumbled upon the embroidery (manbroidery!) of one Mr. Xstitch (on Flickr) and he just ticks all the boxes for deserving being in the Feeling Stitchy spotlight: he's a dude, he embroiders, he makes his own patterns of cars, pop culture figures and graffiti (yeah, baby!) I had to know some more so I asked him a few questions. Thank you, Mr Xstitch!

Why did you start doing cross stitch?

It all began with a trip to Canada - I wanted something to do and found myself in a haberdashery shop. I bought a pattern of an art nouveau head, and found it surprisingly enjoyable to do. After I finished that piece I wanted something different to do, but found it hard to source patterns that really tickled my fancy. In the end I settled for the Kiss by Klimt from the Cross Stitch Collectables site. But it sparked off a desire in me to make patterns that I wanted to stitch.


Can you tell us about your subject matter?

I've always been a fan of graffiti and street art, but have never been brave enough or artistic enough to actually do any myself. However, within the pixellated world of cross stitch, things make more sense for me, and having spent some time researching different graffiti pieces I decided to turn some into patterns and have a go at stitching them. The only flaw in my plan is that each of my patterns is about twelve inches wide and takes several months to complete. So periodically I’ll do some smaller pieces – ironic samplers or blackwork – as a way of making things interesting.



What reactions do you get from other people? (being a dude embroidering and all)

People are kinda surprised that I do stitchery, especially as I’m six feet tall with a bald head and look like I should a doorman rather than an embroiderer. But I extol the virtues of needlecraft, how relaxing and contemplative it is, and before long they can understand where I’m coming from. I do like to take small samplers onto the train when I go to work sometimes, just to provoke reactions in people.

This whole “manbroidery” thing is part of the inspiration for my patterns – I want to make patterns with subjects that men can feel comfortable doing. From supercars to superheroes, I want to make cross stitch more palatable for men, so that they can appreciate it as a more relaxing alternative to Gears of War or Halo3. That’s my main aim, and I’m feeling confident!


Where do you find your inspiration?

I spend a lot of time wading through RSS feeds from graffiti and contemporary craft blogs. There’s so much brilliant stuff happening out there, it’s terrific to see. I’m really interested in the political aspect of crafts and how they empower people to fend for themselves – I feel inclined towards more political work as time passes. But there are so many inspirational artists out there, I am humbled. I’m just a pattern maker really, I feel guilty considering myself as anything resembling an artist. I’m just glad to be a part of the craft revolution.

Chicken stitcher

So... embroidered graffiti - have you done any? These are my feeble efforts. Pathetic, really. But you know, I'm just too much of a chicken to do anything, well, really cool! ;-)

So what I have done is make these little embroidered 'patches' which are stitched onto scraps of paper with a sticky foam thingy on the back. This way it can be attached almost anywhere, but be removed easily. By anyone who might not appreciate embroidery.

I have left these on a railing and a bench on a little promenade right next to where we live. Not the busiest place in the world, so I thought that would be a nice place to get my feet wet, so to speak.

I fantasize about putting these in the toilets at airports, but I haven't done so far. I either plum forget or don't have time (= courage).

There is another patch which is on a bench facing the Thames (in London), right behind the London Studios building. Or there was, anyway, who knows if anyone's removed it by now.

So, that's a little update on that. Not as much doing as I'd like. How about you?

Hey, that's not embroidery!

Not yet at least. I really like graffiti and street art and I think they are closely related to the contemporary 'anti-craft' movement (if it is a movement?). I think most people have heard of Knitta and similar groups. Although, they are mostly focused on knitting and crochet; there's not a lot of embroidered graffiti going on. Here is one example though, Ulrika Erde's work on public transportation. I just love that stuff!

There is something really wonderful about the unexpectedness of embroidery on a bus seat. A very interesting aspect, I think, of embroidered graffiti is that graffiti is mainly associated with anonymous guys in hoodies defacing trains and any other surface. There is something aggressive about graffiti (sometimes), for some people it is mainly a way of giving the authorities the finger and less about an art form.

Crochet and embroidered graffiti are gentler forms, perhaps, but I think they can say just as much, although in a more subtle way. To me it is about changing the world ever so slightly, even if it's just by covering a hand rail or a tree trunk in a knitted cosy, saying "look over here, did you ever notice this tree before?" I like that. That someone takes the time to make you stop and think. For no other reason than just that.

I also really like the cross pollination between different disciplines. So, I would like to propose a wee challenge. Which actually has two parts and you can choose to do one or both of them. First, go for a walk and take pictures of the graffiti you see (if you live in the country and there's no graffiti around you can look on the internet or bust out the spray cans yourself!), pick one of them and make it into embroidery. Second, either do embroidery directly on a bus seat or somewhere else in a public space (but try not to get into trouble), or make an embroidered piece from home (geese in bonnets, anyone?!) and attach it somewhere in a public place (again, keep out of trouble.)

Right. This was a very long post, but I hope you'll play along. I'm definitely the slightly timid type, so I may only do the first option. Although, doing the second option would be a bit of a rush. Being ever so slightly illegal. ;-)