Make HERstory with Badass Cross Stitch

Have you ever seen embroidery samplers or quilts in museums, or even your own family heirlooms, and wondered what life was like for the women who made those pieces?

When Shannon from Badass Cross Stitch was gifted a couple of old embroidery projects by her future in-laws, she became consumed with the idea that the things we make are a way to tell our stories, and she decided to take that idea and make it huge.

The result is Badass Herstory, a multi-craft fiber arts project encouraging women and gender non-binary people to learn fiber arts as a way to express themselves and ultimately produce a small project that will become a part of an immense installation and a digital museum sharing the stories of each project.

This is such a cool idea and is stunningly ambitious (her goal is to collection one million pieces) but I really love it. Check out the details page for tons of great information to guide you to tell your story, produce your piece, document it and send it to Shannon for inclusion in her project.

What do you think about this? Are you going to submit? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[Photo: Badass HERstory.]

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Celebrate International Women's Day with Cross Stitch

If you like seasonal samplers and cross stitch patterns with a primitive twist, you’ll enjoy the collection from Curious Carrie Designs.

You’ll find alphabet designs, biscornu, patriotic projects and more. The summer category is the largest on the storefront, with Americana and floral designs. There are also categories for the other seasons and more general designs.

One of my favorites is this pretty sunflower cross stitch pattern, which is shown styled as a biscornu but it wouldn’t have to be. The pattern features sunflowers and bees and a little beehive. It uses 12 colors of floss and each side of the pattern is 51 by 51 stitches, which comes out to 3.64 inches or 9.2 cm square.

I love the fabric she used for the sample, which she actually dyed purple herself, but it would also be pretty on a purchased light blue or other color if you don’t want to dye your own.

There’s also a whole set of themed biscornu with a four letter word on one side (crow, home, love and snow, to name a few) along with a seasonal pattern on the other side.

The shop has a rather small selection at around 90 patterns as of this writing, but it’s a nice collection of traditional looking designs heavy on samplers and biscornu designs, so if those are things you like you’ll want to be sure to check it out. Visit Curious Carrie Designs on Etsy to see all her pretty designs.

Are you a designer or do you have a favorite cross stitch designer who hasn’t made it into the spotlight yet? (You can see all the featured designers in the craft businesses category on the page.) Let me know in the comments, or you can submit more detailed information by clicking on “suggest a craft” at the center top of the page.

[Photo: Curious Carrie Designs]

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