here is the beginnings of workings on fabric, which isn't much to see, i guess. the issues i'm having that are keeping me from wanting to finish it are:
-the text placement/wanting it to be pretty accurate to the trademark/having space within the packet
-the helmet icon/figuring out the correct stitch because the angle is awkward on the feather top
5 comments:
Great - thanks for posting this one. I've been in suspense for a while :)
So, I'm going to begin by admitting my relative ignorance for all things cross stitched. With that in mind:
Cross-stitched art always reminds me of 8 bit graphics somehow - the first Atari Games (RIP - they were awesome, especially tennis) I guess their limitations in their graphics was the size of the processing power and memory chips... Are you trying to do these to scale? I would imagine that doing something at this scale with the amount of detail required in the graphic would drive even an expert cross-stitch er insane. My suggestion would be to experiment with scale - if you make it larger than life, you'd have more 'pixels' to work with -so to speak. If you kept it small, you may have to '8-bit' the graphics to make it tolerable.
Would that kind of scale increase help the angular lines of the crested helmet? Do I have even an inkling of a clue in regards to this craft? I trying to use my limited bead weaving experience to relate to the whole grid based design dilemma .
In terms of what you've done so far, I think it looks like great craftmanship.
How hard would it be to do a test piece? Maybe on a seperate piece of fabric - you don't have to worry about being precious about it - just do the math and figure out the approach. It would probably take you... 2 hrs? It don't have to be pretttty, right?
I would love to see this one done. and what comes next...
I can't help but fantasize that you'll cross-stitch a ripped open condom pack and then crochet a used condom to go with it :) but I should be careful with my suggestions - you could probably beat me up if you didn't like em.
many more cross-stitches to come in the future. my original idea began with cross-stitching corporate american buildings, such as walmart, mcdonalds, starbucks, etc. i want to explore the concepts of new and temporary america with the old and traditional america. these are all things i contemplated a lot while living on the road and seeing how america looks the same everywhere and why. etc. etc. i thought it would be best to start with something easier to stitch, small and basically monochromatic, hence the condom. after this, the sewings will mainly be architectural in nature. so yes, definitely a series. an ongoing one of varying scale.
8 bit graphics is a reference source for sure. it is also how i am trying to figure out layouts. photographing the subject then decreasing the pixel count extravagantly. (something we didn't really learn at scad, ha) i'm still trouble shooting this and any insight as to ways to go about it without gaining great fuzziness of the image would be helpful.
right now, i am making small pieces, the condom pretty much to exact scale. however, in the future i hope to do some larger than life pieces by using a slightly different stitch that involves less stitching.
the bigger the piece, the easier it is to make the diagonal desired for sure. i am trying to limit myself with scale on this one for some reason, and maybe that is exactly what is keeping me from finishing it. i will work on this one more and see how to improve for the next time.
it's hard or close to impossible to do a quick test with cross-stitching, which is annoying, but if i keep things small and just go for it, then i can figure out the problems and increase scale to accomodate with the next piece. i forsee a series of condom cross-stitches before i have the right one. in that case, i better get stitching. thanks for the input! i feel motivated again. (oh and i like the dyptic idea of the ripped condom, thanks eden. ha)
You could also move into a tryptic with a crocheted condom. Personally I would go for that, one that is 3D. But I tend to play with the "how far can I take this" aspect of making things, and allow myself to go over the edge and then take a step backwards.
As for avoiding great fuzziness, If you make a clone of the original and emboss it to make certain line details jump out, that might be of use in the original planning/blueprint stage. then if you are able to hand stitch details following those lines, or convert the text and line to a shape more easily cross stitch-able. There was someone at the SMFA while I was there that made hand stitched copies of all her receipts for art materials and such. (including groceries because you can't make art if you're dead) It was a little overly self-referential to be enjoyable en mass but with only a few pieces on display at a time it was, and still is thoroughly enjoyable. She basically stitched through the actual receipt using it as a template as far as I could tell.
Hey, I found a link that explains how to make a cross stitch pattern from an image in photoshop. it's a pretty good tutorial - just has some annoying popups and layout so bear with it...
here it is:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Cross-stitch-pattern-in-photoshop-with-symbols/
I also played around in photoshop and figured out that if you run the filter 'patchwork' under textures on an image and then slide the do-hickies up and down a bit - you can get a rough pattern for stitching. You might even try running this filter twice in a row to push the effect.
tell me what happens... ;)
Post a Comment