Tonight! Tonight!
I’m excited!!
350 Craft Comp – Voting Time!
A while back I talked about the competition that Craftster.org was running with 350.org. Well, it’s voting time! You should absolutely go and check it out and vote for your favourite. I can’t chose a favourite ’cause there’s so many good entries!
The Revolution is Handmade
The Melbourne Craft Cartel are hosting an event! Yip, ’cause it’s not all about making stuff and selling stuff and buying stuff but it’s also about thinking about stuff!
Along with the two presentations, we’ll also be screening the film of the Melbourne Revolutionary Craft Circle Footscray I wanna live here craft action night. Plus drinks and nibbles, and it’s free! Awesome
Please note this venue isn’t wheelchair accessible. This is a child friendly event but getting prams up the stairs is a two person job, so get in touch if you’re gonna need a hand up the stairs and we’ll suss out a plan.
RSVP and tell your friends on Facebook.
Craft Cartel Podcast Episode #6
This episode on the Craft Cartel podcast, Casey’s back!!! So we have a lovely chat about crafty South East Asia travels. And we go out on an EXCLUSIVE adventure with the Melbourne Revolutionary Craft Circle on their latest crafty night out.
We got some ace music from Boil Up and the super awesome and currently touring North America, Blue King Brown!
Our zine review this week is Havoc from the Huon Valley Environment Centre (download and donate!!!!) and the Weld Echo zine from the Black Sassy Arts Collective.
The websites to check out are:
We also talked about a couple of events. First was ‘the revolution will be handmade: political fabric crafts and the struggle for social justice’ a public meeting that we’re organising on the 4th of September. It’s at 6.30 pm level 1, 27 Hardware Lane, Melbourne.
And we’re organising a crafty bike competition in collaboration with the Melbourne Bicycle Film Festival. If you’re keen to get involved get in touch. And we’ll be running a market during the Festival so start making your bicycle themed crafts all you makers out there!
And as always we’d love to hear from you, comment below or drop us a line. And don’t forget to check out the archive if you’re new round here.
The best way to listen to the podcast is to subscribe and download today!
Putting this podcast together is a labour of love but it does take a bit of time and effort, so if you like what you hear, feel free to chuck some dosh in our virtual busking hat. We’ll love you for it!
As we come marching, marching
I’m pleased to present the first Radical Cross Stitch official collaboration!
This pattern was designed by me and has been stitched by the lovely Cross Stitch Ninja. And you wouldn’t believe how quickly she did it, I am so in awe!
This pattern has been a labour of love and is a tribute to some of the roots of creative resistance. The Bread and Roses poem and song was penned in 1911 and is most commonly associated with the women of the Lawrence Massachusetts textile strike of 1912.
This strike was a defining moment in Union history as it saw a very large working population of mostly women and immigrant workers organising themselves for better pay and conditions.
The pattern contains more about the story of the Lawrence Strike.
So if you want to get your own copy of the pattern, skip over to the Radical Rags etsy store and pick one up today! By buying one of these patterns you are supporting grassroots creative resistance for social and environmental change!
Green Craft Carnival
Crafting a Green World has started a new blog Carnival called the The Carnival of Green Crafts (naturally).
It’s twice monthly so there should be plenty of inspiration for all of us conscious crafters.
They’re also looking for more people to host carnivals so check out their list of dates and grab one. And of course submit your green craftiness! I reckon the Ninja should submit her new bag she made eh?
I’ll post a link to the carnival when it goes up.
Dissent is Patriotic
I had this moment of trepidation when opening this email this morning. The subject was ‘celebrating the 4th in fine fashion’. There’s been a rash of July 4th crafts going round the internet at the mo. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with July 4 crafts, I just get nervous around patriotic fervour…
But I was much relieved to discover the link was to this super cool bookmark
It’s by RCSP crew Katie Lee and I reckon it’s ace. She has this to say:
Super simple, I know, but in order to celebrate any sort of “Independence” we must also celebrate the thinkers, artists and activists (including ourselves) who don’t follow or agree with the status quo, and are always questioning, learning, creating and sharing.
Hear hear! I reckon some of the ‘founding ‘fathers’ would roll in their graves if they could see the state of the empire.
Katie Lee and I have been working on a wee collaboration too. Stay tuned!
Fabric of Resistance – The Wiki
A little while ago I mentioned a new project that was about to begin at Radical Cross Stitch and now it’s time to share it with you all.
The Fabric of Resistance project has been started as a way of recording, archiving and celebrating the awesome herstory of craft based resistance. Originally I was just planning on running a series of profiles of activists, activist groups and campaigns but the more I thought about it the more it make sense to set it up as a wiki.
So http://radicalcrossstitch.com/wiki is the new home of the Fabric of Resistance project. There is only the bare bones of the project up at the moment but I figured now was a good a time as any to bring others on board if they were keen to help out.
I’m about to start building a task list in the community portal so if you’re keen to help, that’s probably a good place to start looking.
But the major piece of help I need is getting the word out there, which is where you come in!
We need this message to go out far and wide to uncover and collect our radical craft past and present. Please write about this on your blogs and tell your friends, activist groups, craft groups, women’s studies departments, grandmothers, customers, anyone you can think of. I’ve drafted a general email below, but feel free to add your own bits.
And have a look around! There’s not much there yet but I’ll be adding a lot more content over the next couple of weeks. And of course, you should too!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Please help spread the word
The Radical Cross Stitch Posse are proud to announce the arrival of their new baby. Out of the clicks of the needles and the desire to celebrate our wonderful creative communities and internet archive of the herstory of radical craft has been born.
The Fabric of Resistance is a non-heirarchical community created archive and celebration of radical craft action and organisation, past and present. The wiki style archive has been established as a resource for radical craft practitioners, historians, students. Fabric of Resistance is a tribute to the creative resistance which is often marginalised by both crafters and activists, yet has provided the visionary spark for great uprisings, revolutions and major social change
So we have started this wiki as a public archive of profiles of activists who use(d) craft as a way of communicating their ideas, resistance and vision. And at some point in the future, all these stories will be collated into a book.
This wiki is a constant work in progress. So this is a call out is for the stories of women and men you know in your community who use craft as a form of resistance.
Please add your stories, preferably with images. We want to know names, dates and issues. But we’re especially interested in the stories behind the work. Tell us about the design processes as well as the creation process. If you want help with questions to ask people let us know.
And please don’t hold back because you think some information you have is not significant enough. Even if you just remember someone’s name from some protest back in the day, add it in because it might be a good lead for some else to follow up on.
Finally, please pass this information on to people you know who might want to help collect these stories. We need this call out to go as far and wide as possible.
Love and rage and solidarity
http://radicalcrossstitch.com/wiki
Free Tibet Denim Jacket
FINALLY!
Sorry this took so long but I managed to hurt my back and I was so sore I couldn’t even cross stitch! My partner knew there was really something wrong with me when I ignored the stitching.
So here’s my cross stitch contribution to the Free Tibet creativity movement sweeping the globe at the moment (check out the poster art featured on Groundswell). And my contribution to the Free Tibet XStitch Competition.
And here’s the pattern if anyone wants to use it. Click on the image for a pdf pattern with colour guide and cross stitch instructions.
I also promised earlier to give a bit of a tutorial on how to use waste aida fabric to cross stitch directly on to fabric. So here’s a couple of pics to show how I did it.
The first thing you need to do is secure the aida fabric to your chosen fabric. You can either tack the corners with some stitches which you can remove later. Or you can hold the two pieces of fabric together with an embroidery hoop.
I forgot to take a photo while I was still stitching but I used a hoop to secure the aida fabric to the jacket. I’m sure you can use your imagination as to what it would look like.
Once you’ve finished stitching, remove the hoop or stitches and then trim the aida fabric as close to your stitching as possible.
Then you carefully pull all the threads out, starting from the edge.
I also try and cut the aida between letters where there was a bit of room so there was a bit less to pull through.
My advice is to not pull to hard on a thread if it’s really tight, just move on to another section. Sometimes when you’re stitching you can accidentally stitch through the aida so it’s best to leave those threads until the end to deal with. The last thing you want to do is break one of your stitched threads!
In the end it will look like this
Hopefully that’s useful for you readers out there. I reckon it’s a great way to embellish clothes and bags and other things you carry/wear around. Use your imagination, there is a billion things to stitch on if you think about it hard enough!
Creativity 350
Oh I’ve been meaning to post this for ages but I’ve been too busy finished a Free Tibet X Stitch (and just wait til you see this entry I got yesterday!). So now that competition is drawing to a close, here’s a new one for you to enter!
The clever crew at Craftster have teamed up with 350.org to run a craft competition AND a tshirt design competition to help build awareness about the global environmental crisis that we seem to be doing our best to avoid dealing with.
Entries all need to be based around the magic number 350. Do you know what that mean? If not, get informed quick!
And they’ve got a ton of ace prizes that you can win.
So get on over and check it all out. Entries need to be completed and submitted by the 15th of August.