By the hoary hosts of Hoggarth, I’m loving this big pixel Thor quilt made by Stephanie aka Marquise-Crafts!

Forsooth she hath made a Loki quilt too!

Naomi Ryder is a textile artist and illustrator from London, England.

“With a background in textile and fashion embroidery and with her highly developed observational skills, Naomi has received commissions from fashion designers such as John Rocha, Domino records, Southbank Centre (depicting members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra) and the V & A.  Naomi has also run workshops at the V & A and the Fashion and Textiles Museum, London.

Naomi has just completed a residency at the Muir Arts Trust “whose open studios, workshop and individual display will complement the stunning exhibition of embroidery and textiles, “Splendid Stitches”, at the Buckinghamshire County Museum.

Naomi loves to draw as much as she does to sew and in this residency she will be employing both skills to create stitched portraits of people:  those involved with or visiting the museum as well as the local life of Aylesbury. Naomi’s open studio, workshop and talk will allow visitors to engage with her work and see for themselves how much life and movement can be created in stitch. 

I always admire free machine embroidery artists, dropping those feed dogs to make cool illustrative pieces. Naomi epitomises this style, and it’s great to see her commercial successes continuing.

You can see Naomi’s work as part of the Splendid Stitches and Exotic Embroideries exhibition at Buckingham County Museum running until 6th July 2013, or visit her website to find out what she does next. One thing’s for sure, she’s on an upward trajectory!

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The Cutting & Stitching Edge is brought to you in association with PUSH: Stitchery, the must-have embroidered art book by Mr X Stitch !

Showtime Snippets sweeps together all kinds of titbits from the interwebs into this handy digest for you. If you’re a stitch/textile artist, hopefully these snippets will help you find shows and exhibit!

A word of caution – these snippets are collated by Google Robot things that don’t appreciate the textile arts the way you do, so they might get it wrong sometimes.

Call For Artists

Call To Artists

Quilt Shows

Quilt show to raffle off homemade queen-sized quilt

Wednesday May 22nd, 2013 06:15:38 PM

MILFORD — The 11th annual Quilt Show, sponsored by the Milford Valley Quilters Guild, will be held June 22 and 23. The guild is an organization of more than 100 members from Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey to encourage and educate its ... See all stories on this topic »

The Pike County Courier

Textile Shows

Coming antique rug and textile fairs

Friday May 10th, 2013 06:12:58 PM

These fairs include BARE, KARMA, Sartirana Textile Show and ARTS SF. The very first edition of BARE, Berlin Antique Rugs & Textile Exhibition, will open for ...

Jozan Magazine

Are rats cute? How about mutant rats?

Well, this little guy by f. bearclaw is cute in a wicked way. And as if the pastel stitching by the insanely talented f. bearclaw wasn’t enough…

This mutant rat GLOWS in the dark! How awesome is that?

Check out more of f. bearclaw’s work in her flickr stream. Amazing stitching!

Too Cute Tuesdays are brought to you in association with our friends over at Feeling Stitchy!

In the exciting world of the interwebs, sometimes it’s tricky to stay in touch with everything that’s going on. Fortunately, there are lots of ways that you can connect with your favourite contemporary embroidery website! Check them out!

First and foremost is the Mr X Stitch site, bringing you two posts a day with all the stitchy goodness you could ever need! The easiest way to get new posts delivered to your door is via our RSS feed.

For the umpteen million people on Facebook, there’s our Facebook fan page, with all the posts and random bits of chit chat you could ask for!

Follow Mr X Stitch on Twitter! Everyone else is!

Get down with Mr X Stitch on Google Plus! We’ve also started an Embroidery and Needlecraft community on there! (Not sure what we’re doing on there – maybe you can help us work it out!)

The Phat Quarter on Flickr is the place to share pictures of your work, and every Fifth Friday you can take part in our legendary stitchy swaps!

We’ve got some awesome boards on Pinterest, so you can while away the hours looking at lovely pictures of terrific textile treats!

If you’re a deviantArtist you can share your work on our Phat Quarter Division over there!

We’ve got a Newsletter, which is going from strength to strength and keeps you abreast of our news and competitions. Join our mailing list to keep up with the gossip!

And don’t forget, you can contact us with artist recommendations, nice words or interesting ideas! It’s great to hear from you!

If you’re in the New York City area on June 6th, don’t miss out on an amazing poetry + embroidery event in Brooklyn.

As part of her EmbroideryPoems #BrooklynTweets project, artist Iviva Olenick is hosting a poetry reading and musical performance. As poets read and musicians play, embroiderers will stitch snippets of lyrics and verse to create new, “found” poems.

It should be a boundary-pushing, artistic night. Come join in!

Here are the details:
Thursday, June 6, 6-9pm
@61 Local, 61 Bergen Street near Smith Street
F/G to Bergen Street

Read more about Olenick’s project on the New York Times Magazine blog.

(P.S. I’ll be there stitching, so please say hello!)

Diane…I see before me a cross stitch of my own face. Damn Fine!

This amazing cross stitch of Dale Cooper is by Mosh Stitch.  She has also stitched Iron Man and a Storm Trooper!

Ladies and gentlemen: please direct your attention to the fine freestyle machine embroidery of Nicola Elliott, aka Picturestitch. Based in Manchester, England, Nicola creates custom embroidered wedding portraits. She works with customers to develop a piece to reflect their special day, based on their images or just their ideas, and will even incorporate mementos like a piece of fabric from a wedding dress.

But that is not all! If you’re digging the slightly spooky, Gorey-esque quality to these, then check out what else she’s been up to:

Nicola’s series of dark fairytale designs is particularly compelling.

Rapunzel

Alice in Wonderland

Snow White

See more of Nicola’s enchanting work on Etsy or on Picturestitch‘s site!

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This post is brought to you from the offbeat gals at Urban Threads. Created by illustrator Niamh O’Connor, Urban Threads is revolutionizing machine embroidery one edgy, elegant, innovative, and/or offbeat design at a time. Discover the future of digital stitchery at www.urbanthreads.com.

The Phat Quarter is our Flickr group where you can share pictures of your best stitcheries!

It’s also the place where we host our legendary swaps to coincide with our Fifth Friday Festivals of Fabulousness!

Here’s the latest 20 pictures that have been added. Why don’t you come and join us?

This month, I’d like to highlight a few pieces of functional felt artwork. The utilitarian aspect of the sculptures featured in this post is a reminder of the humble origins of this medium, but make no mistake – function takes a back seat to form here! These sculptures are both lovely and strange and I hope that you will enjoy them as much as I do.

These are two animal purses by Polish artist Galina Blazejewska (more at https://www.etsy.com/shop/galafilc). Fully realized sculptures in their own right, they are also hollow so that items can be carried inside. Her octopus pieces feature a clasp atop the head, but her fish and frog designs incorporate the clasp into the sculpture itself, serving as the creature’s mouth. I think the odd combination of animal and bag is interesting – do they evoke an innocent love of animals, or do they make a statement about bending nature to our will?

Can you guess what these pieces are used for? No? Here is a hint – they are from German artist Susanne Karg’s shop Felt for Cat (https://www.etsy.com/shop/feltforcat). That’s right, they are cat beds or “cat caves”! Each piece has a large hollow interior for your cat to crawl into and enjoy. My particular favorites are the seashells pictured above, because I’m tickled pink imagining a cat’s head poking out of the shell like an enormous hermit crab. But all that aside, these cat beds are beautifully constructed with wonderful attention to detail. I don’t think you need a cat to appreciate them!

Brooklyn artist Rae Stimson creates wearable landscapes out of felt, like these two incredible hats. The first is a kitchen scene that puts me in mind of The Black Lodge in Twin Peaks. The second is a detailed landscape scene depicting a WWII battle in which tiny Panzer tanks destroy a bridge. These pieces are moments frozen in time and the act of wearing one literally “on top of mind” gives them a significance and weight that would not otherwise be present. Find more of her creations at https://www.etsy.com/shop/RaeStimson.

As always, please don’t hesitate to contact me if you would like to submit your portfolio for the column! As you can see, the possibilities are endless, so happy felting!