there's our catastrophe

seamsandstory:

Embroidered map of the Appalachian orogeny (mountain building event that created the Appalachians) counterposed with a diagram of mountaintop removal mining. Part of a series I’m doing about June’s March on Blair Mountain. 

(via besttumblr)

lithiyummy:

PHOTO:  Major A. T. Casdagli RAOC, ‘God Save the King, F*** Hitler’ ,1941 ©Captain A. T. Casdagli  After six months held by the Nazis in a prisoner of war camp, Major Alexis Casdagli was handed a piece of canvas by a fellow inmate. Pinching red and blue thread from a disintegrating pullover belonging to an elderly Cretan general, Casdagli passed the long hours in captivity by painstakingly creating a sampler in cross-stitch. Around decorative swastikas and a banal inscription saying he completed his work in December 1941, the British officer stitched a border of irregular dots and dashes. Over the next four years his work was displayed at the four camps in Germany where he was imprisoned, and his Nazi captors never once deciphered the messages threaded in Morse code: “God Save the King” and “Fuck Hitler”  ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/sep/03/tony-casdagli-father-stitching-nazis?INTCMP=SRCH )

This is REAL subversive embroidery.  Not just sewing swear words in vaguely ironic ‘bless this house’ style formats.  Can’t wait to get to the exhibition in October.

(via textilenerd)

faketrain:

[img: embroidered piece of fabric. fabric has a colourful dotty print. the embroidery is of the bodies of two people hanging off a tree branch with their knees hooked around the branch, feet touching a bit, bellies exposed. text reads MAKE SHIT HAPPEN with the SH in SHIT in a different colour so a second reading may see MAKE IT HAPPEN.]

MAKE (SH)IT HAPPEN (by l e n a mnop)

first time embroidering a non-abstract image instead of just text or meaningless shape.

I love this! 

(via faketrain-deactivated20110925)

artinablender:

MATTHEW COX

Foot with Seeded Grass, 2010, Embroidered X-Ray!!!, 10 x 12 in.  

(via fuckyeahembroidery)

genghisgenghiscohen:

mandrake, close up (by blackmountain)

a better look at the embroidery. full view here.

look! you can actually get a “queer scouts” patch now. by mary tremonte.  purchase link.

weeglas:

Embroidered Penguin Classics covers by Jillian Tamaki.

Lovely.

some of the things that are excellent about this:

- the fringed mane

- the patterned body

- the nice use of negative space on the right forefoot

beefranck:

The last post reminded me of this confessional sampler, stitched by a 19th century woman struggling with thoughts of suicide.

Click the image for more pictures and the complete text.

holy hell. this is… intense reading. 

been doing a lot of cross stitch lately.  I find “radical cross stitch” as a concept a bit uninspiring because I feel like it’s often approached as parody?  like ha ha, look at the incongruity, this bitter or edgy message in this traditionally saccharine medium.  but in fact (as this piece shows) embroidery in general and the cross stitched sampler in particular have a rich and complicated and often subversive history.  it’s women’s culture, women’s communication, women’s lives.  I’m more interested in modern embroidery that’s conceptualised as a continuation rather than a parody of traditional embroidery. 

(via tastyfake)

tastyfake:

piglady (by SpidersPaw)

image: embroidered picture of a woman in a slip with a pig’s head.  the pig’s head is filled in and cartoonish and bright pink, as opposed to the rest of the picture which is in thin lines and muted tones.  she is waving her arms about wildly. 

as some of you know, I have a bit of a kneejerk negative reaction to pictures of people with hipster-approved animal heads (foxes, birds, squirrels), but I like this.  pigs are different.  reminds me a lot of pig tales by marie darrieussecq (which I liked a lot, although I had some issues with it.)  pig tales gets compared a lot to kafka’s metamorphosis but I think the resemblance is pretty superficial — person transforms into animal in nightmarish setting.  pig tales is basically a dystopian novel, more broad-scale, quite different to Kafka’s squalid family drama.  kafka is talking about disgust with oneself, darrieussecq is talking about an (originally) apathetic and fearful individual in a disgusting society.  if we’re going to draw comparisons then I think it has a lot more in common with atwood’s feminist dystopias, The Year of the Flood in particular. anyway.  yay pig ladies.