Fashioning Cross-Stitch

Pilates last night and a hair appointment tonight, so nothing to show. How about a fashion show?

Emma Roberts’s Moschino needlepoint purse (sold out) is my favorite “edgy Grandma accessory.” The article encourages the reader, who they imagine can’t afford a Moschino bag (raises hand), to stitch their own. But of course, since Grandma is invoked in the title, she closes the article too: “And if you need help, give Grandmama a call.” (Eyeroll.)

Sticking with the fashion theme, here's a story about the 176 year old Angels Costumes. The north London warehouse’s 1.5 million outfits make it the largest privately owned collection of costume for film, theatre and television anywhere in the world.

The journalist who wrote about this "ugly Christmas sweater" maybe has never heard this Christmas song?

The Art of the Stitch

News stories about cross-stitch brought to me by my Google aggregator have been backing up in my inbox since I spent so long off the blog. I have so many stories to share, I'm going to have to break it up.

Classify these stories under cross-stitch makes its way into other art forms:
Murals: Ah, cross-stitch "a nod to old traditions." But the stairs have become art.

Tattoos: someone has aggregated cross-stitch style tattoos from Instagram. And there are some pretty good ones!

Concert Posters Featuring an illustrator who makes making cross-stitch designs harder than it has to be (dude, there's software!), who outsources the actual stitching (grr), and throw in a reference to the ancient ancientness of cross stitchers, this article isn't as happy-making as we might like. This is also the guy who did the 30-foot Star Wars panel (which I reported on earlier). And as usual, the reporter couldn't keep the old ladies out of it:

"The idea is that cross-stitching is a hobby usually carried out in the home for an ornament or in memory of a special occasions within family life, which Guestar hopes home concerts will become a part of. We’re not sure who younger than the age of 65 actually cross-stitches anymore, but we love the idea."

Old Lady Count: Eleventy-million? I think I officially lost count in 2010.

Thanks for your lovely comments on Christian's Stocking. I'm waiting for the beads to come in, which I hope is super soon! I've blinged-out two of the other stockings. I'm getting there!

Media Relations

My inbox was full, full, of random articles from my Google aggregator. I bring them to you in no particular order:

• Stitching and mindfulness. 
• Stitching as therapy  (I know the second photo is a Lizzie*Kate design, but if you know the other two designers, especially the first one, please identify in the comments.)
• Racism and a little ageism meet embroidery (Why don’t you just embroider them? The quotes sound like something my grandmother would say,’”)
• Who even knew Torontonians was the demonym? Toronto skyline charted.
• Not to be outdone, the Winnepeggers (seriously Canada, you crack me up!) help create a piece on the Scottish diaspora 
• Snarkilily got some coverage in January (And Albertans. 
• Someone's rescuing those abandoned cross-stitches, and you can too. 
• The sounds of cross-stitch (Hungarian embroidery to be precise) 
• The Summer I Learned to Sew (not me, the author) takes pot shots at cross-stitch, sewing and crafters generally. Harumph.
• I've featured stories on craftivism before, but here's an interesting interview with the founder, Sarah Corbett: "The craft I focus on using is mostly hand embroidery and cross-stitch—handicrafts that require you to slow down and do gentle repetitive actions that help you to think deeply and critically about the global issue you care about."

And, full circle.

Oh, You Noticed

The dude and I recently saw Hello, My Name is Doris. In the movie, Sally Field's Doris is swanning for a much younger man and, in hanging around with him, her "vintage" becomes hip. In the hands of a lesser actress, Doris could have been completely ridiculous. But Field makes Doris charming and compelling.

I've been meaning to respond to Sanya Burgess's Sunday (London) Times article "I'll be Darned - Sewing's Trendy." Which demonstrates how the old lady craft, taken up by the hipsters brings cross-stitch from the ridiculous ("grannies and kittens and puppies!") to the hip (twenty year olds cross-stitch in bars!). 

I just wish these journalists had the sympathy of a Sally Field so they could elevate their articles. Instead of relying on the old granny foil, how about really understanding what you're talking about? If you're looking for patterns beyond the puppies and kittens, how about going to a dedicated cross-stitch store rather than a big box craft store? And I'm not talking about Sew and So. I just went there because they are specifically mentioned in the article since 300,000 of their visitors (they don't tell you how many total visits) are between 18-34. Big.Box.Craft.Store. (Which have their place! But don't tell me you don't like their stock therefore cross-stitch is for old ladies.)

The other evidence they give for young people getting into "needlecraft" is that they are "beating their grandmothers to the best sewing machines and cross-stitch sets." The sewing machines are in bright colors, which apparently attract young people. (Ooh, shiny.)

Let's invent a cross-stitch where there's space for everyone.

Come Back?

If you are inclined, you can download this one here.

You know how I enjoy the ironies of cross stitch--the old lady craft being undertaken by young people. The stories that show how the super-feminine craft is being used in ways not usually associated with femininity (porn, protest, feminist messaging). The highly educated woman taking up cross-stitch which was once the limit of a girl's education.

The candidate who famously decided not to "stay home and bake cookies" has a cross-stitch pattern available on her website. The Atlantic covered it recently. But instead of enjoying the ironies, they've decided that cross-stitch is making a comeback. Fine by me.

And Then My Head Exploded.

You know how I was at the Library last night for a Friends meeting (maybe I forgot to tell you that)? And then Saturday is the Library Gala and Silent Auction? Well tonight was the Volunteer Appreciation dinner at the Library! I'm going to be all Libraried out by Thanksgiving! (Not really; it's a great place with great people!) It was a nice dinner and good to be recognized. We were also able to recognize the other volunteers who we may not work with (the people who deliver books to the homebound, the people who work at circulation during the day, etc).

So I fished around in my inbox and found this interesting article and video about prison inmates in New Mexico selling their crafts. I would especially like to draw your attention to the woman who does cross-stitch.

"A female artist took more than a year to cross stitch a detailed image of a tiger, since she’s not allowed needles in prison...The cross stitched tiger was made using a bread tie."

Cross stitch

Without needles.

{Head explodes}

Old Sad Boring Ladies with Nothing but Time

It's a long weekend in America, so I know you'll need some extra reading.

Instagram/Eva Krbdk

Tattoos "grandma might actually approve of"...(Never mind the grammar, there's gramma!) I've lost count, in the past nearly twelve years, of how many times we've been likened to grandmothers. But the tattoos are cool.

More old ladies, lesbian old ladies even. Includes an interview with Julie Jackson that says she doesn't know what traditional cross-stitchers think of her patterns because she  doesn't "run in those circles." Well, really, why not? We're quite amusing, you know.

Guy cross-stitches new debit card in less time it takes his bank to send him a replacement.

Stitched Up News

I don't think I ordered that from my favorite ONS:

The same story with the "not your grandmother's stitching" spin. Hell that's not even my stitching. (And PS you do not know my grandmother.)

Need an idea for your next tat?

Roll out the Doctor.

Celebrity face in cross-stitch. This is the weirdest story: guy cross-stitches Marilyn Monroe piece in honor of the 52nd year of her death. Was he just two years late in thinking of it? And why is the newspaper covering it? There is like one sentence related to the stitching, and the rest of the article is fleshed out with Monroe trivia. Of course, I have now written nearly as many words about the article as the article has. And in clicking through, we will send the wrong message. The Burton Mail will be all, "hot damn! Look at all those hits! Let's run that article about the nun who created the portrait of Cardinal Romero with hot dogs!"

Now that's a picture. Aren't you glad I read the internet for you?

Reports from Around the Web

Coral, our South African (former?) blogging friend sent me this link about a giant Star Wars tapestry. She was put off by calling it a tapestry since that is weaving and this thirty foot Star Wars embroidery is done in cross-stitch. Tapestry is weaving. However, since the Bayeux Tapestries are embroidered (and thus not technically tapestries) are the most famous tapestries going, I'm willing to cut some slack. Also 30-foot Star Wars embroidery. Also, $20,000.

CinDC, our friend at Pencils Crossing, sent this story of a recently unearthed stitchery. It's incredible how it brings together the dude's interests (19th century workhouses) and mine (embroidery).  Also the embroidery was found in County Durham, where the dude is from. You can read more about the Frayed exhibit here. And if you are in or near Norwich, why haven't you gone to see it yet?

Whovians

I'm not a Dr. Who person myself. When I was in high school, I had a problem with insomnia, and I watched it--in reruns--occasionally on the 12" black and white my parents let me keep in my room. (Can you imagine trying to explain that to a high school kid today?) It was a privilege, and when I got in trouble (which occurred with surprising frequency), the TV had to be given up. (My sister had a small color TV, but that was later, and it was the one we hooked the computer up to.) (Seriously, life has gotten so strange.)

So my experience of Dr. Who was of the original doctor, and I came in late. All the reruns in the world weren't going to help me sort it out. Of course if the original Dr. had been a little more David Tenant, I might have tried a little harder. (This is also the same period that I got into The Prisoner, and my sister and I would watch it on this tiny b&w sitting on the hardwood floor of my bedroom  because it was so crazy and crazy-different from anything we had seen on TV.) (Patrick McGoohan then showed up with incredible regularity on Columbo, one of my favorite shows.)

At any rate, Dr. Who is 50. And someone scoured the internet and brought together 10 Cross-stitch projects with which to celebrate. My favorite comment is about this Tenth Doctor pattern by BabyMish, "The finished design measures 4 inches wide by 7 inches high when worked on 14-count Aida fabric, so it shouldn’t take you too long to complete." Yeah, except the part where there are a million stitches because it is 28 square inches of solid stitching! I guess it all depends on the definition of "too long." Enjoy! 

Around the Interwebs

* Alice Munro—a fabulous short story writer from Canada—won the Nobel Prize a few weeks  ago. Someone stitched her face, of course!

* Women’s voting in the last election represented in feminine craft at Jezebel, so it must be feminist:

* More awkward reporting about cross-stitch, “In counted cross-stitch, the artist copies a pattern freehand, creating a design with X-shaped stitches on clean, unmarked fabric,” and awe that a man did it. 

* Meant to give you a head’s up on summer reading: 

* And Christmas crafting…

* Embroidery Traditions are Thriving in Central China

Fortunately, young Chinese girls don’t need to have embroidery skills to find a husband any more. But the backward folk in Central China still do it:

Hunan Provence
Ethnic peoples, such as the Tujia, the Miao, the Dong and the Yao, have dwelled in the west and south of Hunan for many generations. They have created several renowned textile crafts that are regarded as treasures of traditional Chinese culture.
 For instance, there is a branch of the Yao ethnic group called Huayao - or "Flowery Yao" -because they are known for their special and colorful clothes as well as outstanding cross-stitch embroidery.
 The women always carry their needles and embroidery work with them so that they can make cross-stitch whenever they have time.

And even in China, you can’t escape the “country” patterns:

“Images of flowers, Mandarin ducks, golden sunsets, and rainbows transform plain cloth into something extraordinary.” (That joke would work better if it were Mandarin geese.)

Unsurprisingly the article laments the kids today who won’t learn embroidery and begs people to take it up.

One of Us! One of Us!

Karen Nyberg, the American astronaut who went up to the International Space Station at the end of last month, brought craft supplies with her: fabric, needle, thread. She sews and quilts! She's planning on making something over the next six months, though she's not sure what. "But that's part of creativity is that it comes with the feeling of the day so I have the supplies in my hands to create if I get the opportunity and the creative notion to do so." 

Check out her twitter feed (@AstroKarenN) or pinterest (http://pinterest.com/knyberg/) to see fat quarters floating in space! Our people truly are everywhere!

Whoa, Nelly!

Remember that lonely Chinese housewife who spent six hours a day stitching a reproduction of a Song Dynasty painting? Well, it's been three years. She's done.

Yup.

It's 22 meters long--about 72 feet. And you thought you were working on a big-ass project! Silly American.*

*Or, pretty much silly-everyone-else-who-thinks-they-work-on-BAPs, no matter what your national origin.

Big, Bigger, Biggest

New stories about some of those mind-bogglingly huge projects you sometimes read about have come through my feed lately:

• A great-grandfather has the patience it takes to stitch and makes "great art." (I also love that these tiny-little-place newspapers never tell you where they are located on their websites. Oh, Werribee, that's right, it's there.)
• Seven best in show awards for one piece whose designer I cannot name. It took her ten months. (She lives in New Hampshire which is all over the website.)
• And the biggest for last: a five-yard-long embroidery. "A housewife in Tancheng town of Pingtan, Fujian province, spent 20 months – six hours every day – embroidering a 3-meter cross stitch [reproduction] of [the Song Dynasty painting] 'Along the River During the Qingming Festival'." Don't worry, her kids are in boarding school and her husband works "out of the town"; she's not neglecting her duties.

Around the Webs

* How true is this?...Check out A Cuppa Tea with Me to read more about her definition of home.

* Mashables links to a woman who cross-stitched an AIM conversation. "It took a year to make!"

* Jill sent me this a while ago but you need to know how you are lowering your blood pressure. (Also chalk one up for the old ladies.)

* Recently the dude was marveling over a "chess is cool now"* tweet--much like our, "cross-stitch used to be for grannies" bits. This cross-stitch is for geekdom story kind of reminds me of that. Only with more grannies.

* When I wrote my dissertation, which was about women's violence, including a lot of dead babies, one of my sort of broad conclusions was that our culture doesn't do enough to support mothers. This is something easy to do. The short story: Purple crying--purple hat--this too shall pass.



* "Once the province of nerds in Coke-bottle glasses, chess has evolved into a glamorous, coolly cerebral sport."

Civil Unrest

I remember exactly what I was doing twenty years ago today. It was a Wednesday. I had spent the day grading papers. I was teaching Freshman Writing at the University of Southern California, and we did this group grading thing to help ensure that grading across the sections was equitable. Our group finished at about 3:45. I needed to have a prescription filled, so I went to the student health center where I overheard two African American women saying that they couldn't believe they had gotten off. Even with no context, I knew exactly what they were talking about. Anyone in Los Angeles would have. We had all been thinking about it. Waiting. Expecting the opposite.

I took the shuttle back to my dorm in downtown. LA's downtown at that time was mostly a place where no one lived. There were very few places to eat. Almost none were open for dinner. When the business people went home, the sidewalks rolled up. It didn't matter to me; that was one of the nights the dorm served dinner. (It was an unusual graduate student living experiment; communal dinner was only served a few nights a week.) I ate and went back to my room to calculate final grades that were supposed to be turned in before Friday. It was warm in my room. I opened the window. Weird...I smelled smoke.

Later I noticed I had a message. My sister: "I just wanted to make sure you were safe. Call me." I called the dude (we had been dating for just about three months and he lived two floors up). He didn't know anything. I went to my next door neighbor, who had a television. The city was on fire. At least that explained the smoke.

Thursday was another bright and sunny day in Los Angeles. Classes were over, and so a group of people who lived in the dorm went out for lunch. We went to Hamburger Hamlet. Normally it would have been a huge wait behind long lines of businessmen. That day, we were seated right away. We lingered over lunch. Finally, the manager came over, "When you leave, we're closing and sending everyone home." We could take a hint; we left. On the walk back to our dorm we noticed handwritten signs in all kinds of businesses. Places were closing early. I was on the phone with my parents when I noticed the Lady Footlocker next door being looted. That night, no dorm dinner. Fortunately for us, The Pantry has never closed. (Not even for the unrest.) A few friends called me and offered to come take me away from downtown. But in the end, the places they lived (Santa Monica and Pasadena) would not escape unscathed. That night the rioting continued.

On Friday, Rodney King asked if we could all get along. Those of us who remained--loads of people had gone home--were in lock down. USC's administration sent food for us. And the R.As had a series of movies for entertainment (which is why I will always associate When Harry Met Sally with the riots). USC put forth a policy for the outlying dorms: they told us to pack a bag and be prepared to evacuate to campus. Those of you who know USC will perhaps find that counterintuitive, bringing us into South Central for the emergency. But USC had (has?) the only riot trained campus police in the country.  More security officers who were licensed to carry were sent to our dorm. On Friday night, I moved to the dude's room because my room faced the street. I remember listening to the helicopters and asking if he thought this was what it was like to be in a war. (Perhaps, in retrospect, a bit overwrought.)

On Saturday, the Marines came. The President had promised a federal investigation. There was a Peace Rally. It was strange, but you could feel that there was a change in the air, and to me, it seemed not to come from the Marines or the President, but from the Angelenos themselves. On Sunday people started cleaning up. It wasn't over, but it was.

Twenty years ago today.

Cross Stitch Porn

Thank you for sharing my disgust with the way the media covers cross-stitch. It's a little tiresome, but it's good to know you are with me! Because I've got more...you knew?

(Warning clicking leads to) Cross-stitch Porn. I'm not using the term loosely as in "food porn." No, I am using it literally. (For those of you who sometimes say your head, "like, literally exploded." I am using literally correctly here to mean "actually or exactly; in a literal manner.") I'd illustrate this post with a picture, but I'll tell you not safe for work. You will be happy to know that cross-stitch here knows no grannies, but it is usually used to "depict cats, flowers, and country homesteads." Seriously? Are these the only two paths we can take? Cats, flowers, and country homesteads or anal sex, blowjobs, and nudity? Oh, you know if it's not one thing it's another!

It is so simple for us to elevate ourselves from craft to Art...

The artist, Leah Emery, does say some interesting things about the juxtaposition of cross-stitch and let me just re-emphasize hard core porn:

As the works are entirely pixelated at close inspection, if you're focusing on the colours, substance and craftsmanship of the work initially it can be difficult to determine the content of the image. Once you take a few steps back the image sheds its ambiguity and becomes clear enough to render the craftsmanship void. 

What I thought at first was, why would you spend so much time stitching these pieces, when it takes 15 minutes to write a porn script and another hour more to make a whole movie?

But she addresses that:

Pitting together the two themes—laborious and beautiful domestic handiwork and the cheap and easy world of the sexually explicit —allows each viewer to respond to the work in their own way, depending on how the ensuing chaos grips them.

But I'm not sure I'd let her get away with that for an answer. It starts out so promising, then devolves.  (Sometimes I think my training as a critic unfits me for listening to what artists say about their art. Maybe that works for you. Sometimes it really is just me.)

Is it art? We've seen this around, so it's not unique. Does it get to be art because it is in a gallery? Because she's trained as an artist? Because she thinks she is elevating the craft by not stitching cats, flowers, and country homesteads? Now there's an idea cross stitched country homesteads where the cats have sex. If I make some sort of bestiality joke here, have I gone too far?


Would this be the wrong time to welcome all my new followers? I do appreciate you being here, even if this isn't quite what you thought you signed up for! Cheers.

I Must Have Something I Could Be Doing...

Boy, I'm chatty this week. I must have too much to do around the house before we go on our abbreviated vacation/second wedding reception trip/formal family photo sitting {ugh} to Maine. Not chatty enough for a real post though.

Here are a few things that caught my eye recently that I didn't put on pinterest. I don't post to pinterest often--mostly because I don't actually surf the internet enough--but it's a fabulous place to say, "hey, I like this." I may try to convert my mom when I see her on the av/swrt/ffps{u}. Then maybe someone will buy me the Miu Miu shoes I fell head over heels in love with. Or not.

• "Your Crafts are not Renegade Enough for the Renegade Craft Fair" at McSweeney's. Which is a funny version of some of the points I've tried to make about Kid's Today reinventing wheels. {ht to Adrienne}
• Hand-embroidered retro-style travel pillows. I'd love to have a small collection in the map room (study). I'd even pay that price not to have to embroider them myself! {via Pink Loves Brown}
• Tea cozy contest in Australia. Here's the pull quote: "There was even a cross-stitched cosy from a male entrant who said he started his project at school more than 50 years ago." F-I-F-T-Y years to finish a project. I look like Speedy Gonzales all of a sudden. I appreciate you, sir.

Many thanks for the comments on my recent finishes, especially the patriotic needlebook. I can't take any credit for the style of it. All props go to The Silver Needle staff, Mona especially. All I had to do was figure out how to link each piece with the fabric hinges, where to put those straps and this ribbon, and which direction everything should face. I didn't have to cut mat board or batting or sew any of the fabric hinges. Even the ribbon was cut to the right size. They made it so easy!

This house isn't going to clean itself and my bags aren't even packed. Ta for now.

Et Tu, Jezebel?

"Kingston University student Inge Jacobsen uses cross-stitch, the very same hobby your grandmother favors, to transform covers and fashion spreads inside magazines into art."


There's a discussion about artists' statements. But you know what I wish? I wish people who wrote about cross-stitch would leave my grandmother out of it. 


Oh, you knew that?

We've Finally Made the Big Time

"Indeed, the capital's growing craze for cross-stitch has been dubbed the new knitting."

And they don't mention old ladies even once.