Radical Cross Stitch

With much excitement I present the beautiful wee things I made for my first ever craft swap! I’ve looked at them before and been tempted. but this one had such an obvious theme for me, I couldn’t help but get involved.

The idea of a craft swap is that you are connected with someone else and you make a certain number of objects for each other within a certain timeframe and along a certain theme.

The swap I got involved with was a feminist/women-centred theme on the Craftster forum.

It turned out I knew the person I was assigned to swap with so it was even more fun.

So here’s all the stuff:

My partner said she really wanted a bag to keep stencils and spraypaint in. I had this gorgeous pink handmade bag that I got from an op shop which I wanted to stitch on, so I embroidered anarchist in arabic on it.

Next up, my partner said she wanted something to keep her knitting needles in so I made a storage book out of a broken old sewing book (wonderful tutorial here). It’s the same book I made all the badges out of.

This is a shot of the outside:

The wooden knitting needles I got from the opshop and I drew an anarchist symbol on the end of one and a feminist symbol on the end of the other.

And the inside:

I included some op-shop knitting needles and a crochet needle. The quote in the middle is a Kathleen Hannah quote and says “art evolves around creating something that isn’t there”.

Next up I made a radical cross stitch patch:

It’s cross stitch riot bling. I made it with silver embroidery thread. Which is REALLY REALLY hard to use and you have to be super patient with it. But I reckon it’s worth the effort cause it looks so pretty!

Finally I included some badges made from pictures out of the sewing book, with my own decoration:

It was such a super fun thing to do and I’m tempted to join another one now. But I’ve got so much other stuff to do and it’s reasonably time consuming.

But if any other radical crafters out there want to swap some stuff feel free to contact me and see what happens.

Thanks heaps to Sin for organising!!!