Australian artist Sera Walters is a visual artist and arts writer based in Adelaide, South Australia. Her artworks take the decorative mediums of fabric, felt, lace, cross-stitch sequins and beads and use them to illustrate the darker side of life.
In her own words she uses the "language of stitch, using French-knots, silk-shading, beads or black-work" to "pierce fabrics with recollections of drama, disaster, misdemeanours and petty crime".
Her crafty art brings to life the effect she imagines that surburban dramas have on the homes they happen in. So the soft furnishings, curtains and every day fabrics of home have a more sinister story stitched on them.
Her Buthering series, featuring stitched and sequinned cuts of meat and ice crystals along with a rather sinister knife and cleaver sewn with elements of glow-in-the-dark thread, is unsettlingly lovely.
If you're a LOST fan then chances are you're, like me, knee deep in the Final Season, and have been running around a mysterious island being chased by a column of black smoke for the last month now. You know who you are. You have theory-battles over your cornflakes of a morning and you possibly use 'the numbers' for the lottery each week.
For all of us LOSTies with crafty leanings I've dug up a handstitched LOST cast to distract you in those empty days when you wait impatiently for the next episode.
Crafty McGee creates applique and embroidered LOST figures which she shows off along with her ideas on where the final season is heading. Warning: there are spoilers ahoy for those who haven't yet caught up with the island action.
You can see the process she uses to make some of her fabulous fibre figures here.
The figures are even backed with a Dharma-printed fabric she made herself. Something I fully intend to track down and make myself an entire wardrobe full of LOSTness with.
Inspired by this example of LOST craft dedication you could make your very own LOST ensemble. Acting out your own ending in the medium of felt and thread, with a stitched Sawyer and handmade Hurley, may be the only way of getting through when it's all over in May.
No one ever said that embroidery was boring; the word itself means to decorate, but as with a lot of handcrafts it has a bit of a twee image. Happily there are artists like Louise Riley out there who take their needle and thread and make jaw-dropping view-challenging art.
Working with embroidery, paint, string, canvas and beads Louise conjures up some unexpected examples of handcraft. Her recent Blood, Sweat and Tears exhibition in London featured fascinating embroidered figures lying on mattresses fashioned from some heart-stoppingly lovely fabrics.
Her handmade badges, seen in her Other Work section are awesome too. The heart-toting Berlin Bear and colourful Bike Life badges are tiny works of embroidered brilliance.
Embroidery allows you to add a bit of whatever you fancy to something run of the mill and is an essential weapon in any crafty warriors arsenal. Inspiration for what to embroider is another thing entirely but happily there's help at hand. If you haven't already stumbled across it then Sublime Stitching may very well be your stitching saviour.
Sublime Stitching is "an independently owned and operated honest-to-goodness home-grown business" founded in Austin, Texas by Jenny Hart. Her aim was to drag embroidery into the crafty present and she's been rather successful at doing just that.
From pirate booty and sassy skull 'n' crossbones to the more bizarre meaty treats there's enough choice there to tempt anyone to pick up their needles and get their stitch on.
There are also featured sets from well-known artists. The lastest being a set designed by Tara McPherson, famed for illustrations gracing the posters of music makers such as Death Cab For Cutie and Beck.
The site also includes tutorials if you're a stitching novice. So there really isn't any reason not to train yourself in stitching skills.
Leaving your crafty mark on the outside world is starting to catch on. Graffiti knitting yarnstormers have been doing it for years, and now it seems that a cross stitcher is leading the way for Team Embroidery.
Ulrika Erdes is a Swedish artist who started arty life studying the History of Art and Philosophy and gradually grew in confidence to become the professional artist she is today. Her artworks include an over-fertilised lawn, a project looking at people's ambivalence towards smoking and some very bizarre doll parts in fast food containers.
What caught my attention was the inspirational sneaky stitching in the form of her public embroidery. Ulrika embarked on a mission to cross stitch seats on buses and trains. Her thread-made birds, hearts and 'Hello's are understated, in keeping with their public plush and removable. My favourite kind of public art.
She also encourages people to contact her with their own public embroidery. Go forth and sneaky stitch!
Did you start a huge project for your beloved way back in '09 that hasn't quite reached the final stages? Or have you just failed to make (or buy) anything yet and are beginning to panic?
Fear not, as embroidery is one of the quickest, yet most effective, ways to whip up a special present for a special person. In many ways, the simpler the pattern the more effective if will look, and I think this Valentine's pattern by Andrea Zuill is a great example. You don't really need a pattern as such: just imitate what she's done here or make your own variant with a message of your choice. But her full tutorial can be found here.
It's the time of year to monster yourself up and this is one of the coolest patterns I have seen so far. Bellana's Monster Hat and Craft on Craftster gives the wearer that 'just devoured by a bugged-eyed beast look'.
The pattern is fairly easy to follow and is a mixture of knit, crochet and embroidery so you're getting all your crafty skill in there at once.
The monster hat consists of a simple knitted tube which is sewn at the top; the eyeballs follow an easy crochet pattern, and the scarf is just knit and purl with a little crochet embellishment for those monster teeth.
Hop over to the Craftster site to see the full pattern.
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