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A question I often find myself sitting with is “how can I bring my work in to the real world?”
I spend my days sitting at my computer, talking to a webcam and even while I know there is a real live human on the other side it can start to feel like a figment of my imagination if I think too hard about it.
Even when I do make something like a podcast or this digital zine, it’s not 3D. I can’t hold it in my hands.
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When I dreamed up this series I started to say “It’s never just marketing” a whole lot.
And one day I joked that it was like a little cross stitch that you’d hang over the back of the toilet in the powder room.
That’s when the idea to make a literal cross stitch to use as the cover art popped in to my head.
I got to work right away and after a few trials and many errors, not only do I have the art for this podcast series but a nice little piece to hang not over the toilet, but my computer as I make this podcast for you.
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The cover art was made using cross stitch embroidery on paper. The border pattern was adapted from Stephanie Rohr’s Feminist Cross-Stitch: 40 Bold & Fierce Patterns and the font is 6C - Handwriting created by Lordlibidan.
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Testing using three or one strand of floss for each stitch.
Forever consulting with my creative director/sister.
Work in progress
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It was about here that I started to realize that this was perhaps not going to work out after all.
The font was too large and did not lend itself to a 1:1 square that I would need to make the podcast art.
Nevertheless I persisted and finished the entire sentence using this pattern/cloth.
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What was I thinking putting the text right in the middle of this giant cloth? I loved the font but something wasn’t quite right. I left the project for a few days.
My creative director/sister sent me a rando post on IG that was cross stitch embroidery on paper.
Within an hour I was at our local Michael’s gathering the supplies I would need to re-craft the cover art.
110lb cardstock and DMC embroidery floss colour matched to my branding.
Border pattern
Test stitches on paper
Punching holes for stitching
Timelapse of punching the holes for the stitches. Feeling myself in flow but maybe that was also the Whiskey Sour not pictured here.
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Once the hand stitching was complete it was time to digitize the piece to create the cover art that I would submit with the podcast.
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Used the Xerox scanner/print/copier at the local library
Paid a local print shop $5 to use their industrial scanner
Colour-corrected by my creative director/sister