Friday, June 14, 2013

Does This Effectively Hide My Thunder?

The idea for this came many months ago, after seeing the neat things Cauchy and others were doing with words and cross stitch.  I was rewatching Season 1 of Arrested Development at the time, and the idea of memorializing my love of the show with a collection of my favorite quotations, in fabric and thread, seemed perfect.

It took some time to make the design (using MacStitch, for those who want to know).  I started with a list of quotes, and then found typefaces for each one.  I used alphabets from books, magazines, and the internet; there are a ton of free typefaces floating around.  After that came the laborious (although not as laborious as I expected) task of trying to fit them all together.  I was left with a hole in the lower middle, so what better motif than a little banana?  (Curtesy of Erin Turowski.)

Then came the stitching.  I made a lot of mistakes, more than I usually make -- sometimes because the typeface was quirkier than I expected, sometimes because I wasn't paying enough attention to the chart (I think stitching words lulls me into complacency), and once because of an embarrassing misspelling.  In some cases, the mistakes led to a redesign of the chart, making the entire thing better.  In other cases, I had to rip out stitches and try again; I hate that.  And in at least one case, I caught the mistake too late to do anything about it; fortunately the error is not noticeable to those who don't know what the design was supposed to be.

I debated what color to use for quite a while, even considering the orange that is in the show's logo.  But that would be a lot of orange, and a not particularly pretty shade at that, so I settled for black (using a bit more than an entire skein of DMC floss).  The yellow banana adds a nice bit of contrast.

I now have a tested and improved chart.  Will I make another, error-free piece?  HA!

ETA: You can buy a pdf of the pattern here.

9 comments:

  1. Love this after seeing it on Feeling stichy.I shall be investigating that program now lol. Thankyou for sharing your wonderful work x

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  2. oh, this is super sweet! i love AD and i love samplers. great job!

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  3. Love this! I'm a huge fan, too. Please tell me you will be offering the design for sale.

    I'm a new follower looking forward to seeing all I've missed and your new creations!

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  4. Thanks, guys. Baye, I've never sold a pattern before, but I'll look into it.

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  5. That is completely brilliant.

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  6. Totally sweet!!! Came over from Feeling Stitchy blog to check it out!

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  7. Wonderful work, Janalyn! Wow!!!

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  8. Totally love this - and would defo buy it if you did put the pattern up for sale :) Have included it in a round-up of my fave things this week... http://www.matinlapin.com/2013/06/my-favourite-things-this-week-69.html

    Vixie x

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  9. Thanks again, everybody! You can find the pattern for sale here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/154919012/arrested-development-sampler-pattern?ref=shop_home_active

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