For the ask game, if you'd like-- top five Sci-fi stories (any medium)
That's a hard one! I have variously liked many Star Treks (is that too broad?), Asimov's The Last Question and Robot novels, Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad, and The Fifth Element, and I did recently find the Murderbot series, Autonomous (Annalee Newitz) and The Fortunate Fall to be pretty good. Real consolecadet old heads will know I have been a William Gibson fan for 1 million years but I'm not sure where the boundary lies between sf and cyberpunk here
These were designed and stitched last year as host gifts, for three siblings who graciously lent me their couch and showed me around town while I was in the area. <3 Each person's biscornu was customized to their interests, and I was aiming for a balance of symmetry and visual variety.
Technical stuff and fancy pictures by @mathysphere under the cut!
General info: Each biscornu has a more detailed 'front' side and a simpler 'back' side. The fabric I stitched on is an 18ct fiddler's aida; in retrospect some of the details would have been cleaner on 14ct, but so it goes. The final squares measured in at 3.5in to a side. All the panel stitching was a baby blue palette of 3756, 3752, 799, and 797 DMC floss, and the seam whipstitching was done with 3781 DMC to match the brown ribbon hangers. I used scraps from an old blue shirt to stuff them, and translucent white buttons + brown beads to secure the classic center pinch.
Avian Art:
The recipient of this one is a painter and associated with birds, so those were the themes I went with. The front side, art themed, alternates paintbrushes and palette knives to divide the piece into quadrants. The corners then alternate palettes with paint dollops and canvases on easels, complete with paint drops below; the canvases have a flower closeup and a mountain landscape. On the back side, bird themed, I opted for identical air swirl dividers but a different silhouette in each corner. The flying hummingbird and parrot both got a small trail of feathers, and the perched cardinal and songbird got a branch full of berries and a pile of seeds respectively.
Caffeinated Chronicles:
The recipient of this one is a writer and a coffee fiend! The front side is word themed, with feather pens and modern cap pens as dividers. The corners alternate piles of books and computers, complete with french-knot keyboards and (unreadable) text on the screens. On the caffeine side, I skipped the dividers to have room for a large "mm..." with a steaming mug and pile of coffee beans in each corner. The mugs and beans have the same shape in each case, but all four mugs have a different pattern.
Delicate Designs:
Last but not least, the @mathysphere biscornu! The front side, cross-stitch themed, is divided by pairs of scissors (specifically Gingher 4" Large Handle Embroidery Scissors, because that's what I use x3) and skeins of embroidery floss (modeled after DMC floss) with wound bobbins and needles. The corners have alternating square and circle cross-stitch designs. Specifically, the squares are tiny monochrome versions of Geri's "Geology Rock Collection" and "Chemistry Sampler" patterns, with "Parasaurolophus" in an embroidery hoop as the circular pattern between them. The final corner, also a tiny embroidery hoop, has an unspecified cross-stitch design in progress (stitched four to an 18ct square) with a parked needle. This was definitely the most complex piece of the lot! I had a lot of fun condensing the given patterns down into such a small size though, and I'm thrilled with how recognizable they all are. ^_^ On the back side, I went for complete symmetry to balance the visual complexity of alternating dragon fractals and bees on honeycomb (with bonus dance lines out to tiny flowers).
All in all, a fun little set of decorations! Miniaturizing things is way more fun than it has any right to be. <3
It's been quite a while, but I'm still alternating a large self-patterned project and @mathysphere samplers as I have time! First up was my version of the Ocean sampler, and now the Autumn sampler has joined the completion pile. As with the ocean one, i did a bonus variation on one of the squares for 17 pieces total.
Technical details under the cut, for those of you interested in such things.
The fabric I used for these was a 28ct evenweave in a muted light brown, stitching two over two. Since I was doing them as individual squares rather than one full piece, I did the borders in backstitch rather than cross-stitch to let the designs shine! I did not bother to keep track of the orientation for each fabric scrap as i went, which is why some are a smidge taller and some a smidge wider. Evenweaves be like that sometimes.
First row: owl, mushrooms, goose, moon
All of these were stitched as given, nothing particular to add here! The moon is my favorite of the row. <3
Second row: apples, pumpkin pie, black walnuts, squirrel
This row got a few changes. The apples were patterned with a sky-blue background, which I left off and later gave to the squirrel instead. The light brown of the squirrel's body was too close to the fabric color to stand out the way it needed to without some help. I also worked the pie border from the reverse side, to give it a thicker line since it was such a light color (plus a bonus fancy-crust twisted effect).
Third row: produce crates, grasshopper, icy leaf, pumpkin patch
This row was also stitched as given. I love the leaf one, but bonus points to the pumpkin patch for feeling particularly fairy-tale!
Fourth row: preserves, campfire, deer, hedgehog
This set got a bit of extra backstitch -- I outlined the lids on the preserves jars, and also the hedgehog's face. In both cases, my fabric color was just close enough to the floss colors to muddle things. I very deliberately did not outline the deer, though -- it seemed so much more fitting that they would blend into the background a bit, as they always did in the woods where I grew up. ^_^
Bonus campfire: The campfire was my favorite square of the sampler, and I had a scrap of mottled dark brown fabric sitting around, so I decided to stitch it again! I could not be bothered to dig out waste canvas; instead I just slapped some of the light brown evenweave onto the back of it with a running stitch and worked right through both. Some of the stitches in the center are a little wonky as a result (parallels to the bookmark, Geri! haha) but it came out pretty well! I do wish I'd thought to stitch the middle of the flames in three strands instead of two, to get more intensity of color, but the visible Xs are fun too! The only changes I made from the pattern were leaving off the black background and using black for the border instead of dark red.
