Sunday 17 March 2013

A well-crafted cover

I was immediately drawn to the latest cover of South African décor magazine Visi, filled with holes and ripe for cross stitching. It’s a competition with a really simple concept – stitch the cover, send in a photo and the entry with the biggest visual impact wins (the closing date for entries was Friday). 


I’m not a cross-stitcher, but thought I’d come up with something… so bought the magazine and set about experimenting. The only stipulation was that you keep the text and the heart. I’m a bit of a white space fan, so I went for texture instead of colour and filled the background with white interlaced double herringbone stitch (a new learn for me). I stuck with black cross stitches for the “I” and “DIY”, and filled the heart with a woven trellis in red. Predetermined holes and printed-on crosses made innovative embroidery a little tricky – working within constraints and whatnot – but it was good to challenge the brain a bit.

I reverted to crochet for the rest of my cover, having a bit of fun along the way making flowers out of Lesley Stanfield’s 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet. The stalks and leaves were also a new learn for me. So all in all, a nice change from my usual day-to-day embroidery.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brilliant! Amazing idea fo a conmpetition and I love what you managed to do within the constraints of the existing holes! Hope you win!!

Unknown said...

i think its beautiful. well done.