and then there was watermelon.

I have conquered the new sewing machine foot vs. felt battle that has been going on for the past few months. I clearly won, it seems indestructable. Which is great.

Fantastic, even.

self improvement is masturbation.

So I've been sewing a lot because I've got some time on my hands. Current projects are graffiti cross stitch, desk rabbits and more bag/tote madness. I gave up on that whole "making bags thing" a couple years ago and I only made them for my sister or my friends, but now that I have successfully moved my fabric collection THREE TIMES (with limited casualties) I HAVE DECIDED TO ACTUALLY USE IT. The Marimekko begs me to use it everyday, I swear. I'm at this point where I feel like if I use it, and I screw the project up, then I will never be able to see it again. See you in 30 years when my home is ceiling-high with cats, fabric and stray pins.

I conquered one project this week that had been bugging me for a couple of years. I bought these Star Wars sheets at an awesome thrift store in Reseda. I actually found an original Star Wars sheet, some sort of remake of the SW original and an E.T. sheet (!!!). I ended up trading them for a spoon necklace with a kid on etsy, but I kept one for myself. I made a couple of bags with it, sold them, and here I am stuck with this sheet STILL. I decided to cut out the death star, fill it with catnip and make a kitty death star. I made a prototype for my friend and he gave it to his kitty, she licked it all over and played with it like a kitty Godzilla um... eating a death star?

Mild Style I

I've been getting itchy with doing new things, which I think happens naturally if you make cat toys for months straight. I haven't touched cross stitch since 'nam, and the cross stitch aisle at the store was creepy so I decided to do something on my own. I looked into graffiti cross stitch and found mrxstitch, which was really heartwarming but not really what I was looking for. I like this sort of thing because it involves absolutely no 'illegal' activity. I'm not the smoothest of people and really, I can be very clumsy at times. This is like graffiti for 80 year-olds, it's awesome. It involves absolutely no do-gooders looking to get you arrested for stenciling Nintendo characters with spray mount.

My attention span and I got kind of frustrated and decided to use the tiniest picture ever via a Beautiful Decay that was just there waiting to be cut up. I had the hardest time finding a picture of usable graffiti larger than 2" x 4". Beggars can't be choosers (thanks mom), so I used the picture I found. It says 'Chief' and it ain't my work. I wish I could use a better color combination, sad thing is that olive green doesn't really pop on black. I had to hand draw the pattern onto the cross stitch grid, and at times was pretty confusing. I used 14 ct. Aida, if that makes a difference. I've watched a lot of Sopranos while doing this and Christopher is becoming more and more attractive to me (Fila suit and no Fila suit). Is that bad?

Here's the very slow progression.