Title: Matrix Code
Date Completed: April 2019
Design: Lord Libidan
Count: 18
Canvas: Black
Colours: 3
Pop Culture: The Matrix Trilogy
 
It’s rare for me to continue editing a pattern whilst stitching a project. It is, after all, the worst time possible to change a cross stitch pattern. However, that didn’t stop me with this project! I edited it 4 times during stitching.
I guess we should start back at the beginning. I had just finished 4 back to back Pikachu on my animated running Pikachu cross stitch, and I hadn’t got anything to stitch. That isn’t a new problem, in fact, I’ve spoken about getting cross stitch inspiration before, but unlike previous times, this was on purpose. I know that might sound crazy, but I stitch a lot of different things, from loads of areas, and wanted to go back to basics and see what really excited me. From the back of this I came up with a load of big projects, however there was one that I thought would be small. I was wrong.
I’ve done a lot of interface/computer screen stitches in the past, like my Voyager Star Trek LCARS cross stitch and really wanted to do something similar. I had just so happened to see that it was the 10 year anniversary of The Matrix and I remembered one of the best computer screens in cinema history. The Matrix code.
I grabbed an image of the code from wikipedia and started charting and soon realised, that despite the apparent simplicity of the code, it was actually super complicated. So my first step was to create a whole cross stitch alphabet but much like the original code, I needed letters that looked recognisable, but weren’t. I made a total of 29 characters, which I then had to put through a random number generator to place each letter in a massive grid. I had originally wanted to make a massive pattern, however less than 1/10th of the way through the pattern was taking me AGES. And whilst it was far from a 100 hour cross stitch pattern, it was too much.
I cut the pattern down, and finished the pattern.

At this point all seemed good, I picked out 18 count fabric to get nice small letters, and make it fit a rough landscape frame. However, when stitching, and rewatching The Matrix, I realised that 90s screens aren’t landscape, they were square. So the first cut came in the form of the pattern becoming a lot more square (not perfectly however). The second change came in the form of an error on my part. Instead of the whole height, I missed out two letters (I really should have gridded by cross stitch). I cut the pattern down again, followed by a further reduction in width after I realised the pattern wouldn’t be square enough. Finally, I cut the last line of code off as I ran out of green DMC 700.
However, despite all of that, its still too big to frame, looks too much like Japanese and is too bright. However, I REALLY loved stitching this. I haven’t approached a lot of 90s movies, prefering the 80s, and really loved the computer screen part of it. I recon the whole nothing to stitch thing worked.

Title: Micro Cassette Keychains
Date Completed: June & August 2018
Design: Lord Libidan
Count: 14
Canvas: Plastic
Colours: 16
Pop Culture: 80s Tape Cassettes
 
I’ve written about how I create designs for the Xstitch Mag before, however in the most recent issue, the theme was ‘Mixtape’. This in essence meant I could stitch anything I wanted. I actually created a series of Gameboys based on a Gameboy Color Micro Console Cross Stitch, however I knew the editorial team liked litteral things, so I thought I would also submit a litteral mixtape.
 
This was the mock up of the designs to test viability, and I randomly picked one of 9 different styles. At this stage it was taken up for the cover for the Xstitch Mag! I designed a further 3 styles so there were 12 in total and stitched them up.

Title: Miniature Traditional Pirate Samplers
Date Completed: May 2018
Design: Lord Libidan
Count: 32
Canvas: Ecru
Colours: 8
Pop Culture: Pirates
 
Now that the new issue of Xstitch Mag is out I can finally show off a few of my recent pieces. The theme this quarter was ‘Heroes & Villans’, and I just just finished watching Black Flag, a pirate drama, and knew I had to do something with the idea.
 
As it turns out, Pirates were actually pretty nice people for the main part, and whilst they did steal, they were free men and freed slaves whenever they could. I wanted to look at the way that the East India Trading Company and pirates are often seen in contrary roles to how they actually were. To stitch them I decided on a period styled set of samplers, on ecru with limited pallettes. When looking through some reference material I saw the cutest little dolls house frames and the idea came to stitch them into doll house size. As a result I stitched on 32 count, which is by far the smallest count I’ve worked on so far.
 
You can pick up the pattern for both of these samplers in the newst issue of the Xstitch Mag, and if you’re interested I also have a companion piece for the mag on how close we are to a robot cross stitch artist.

Title: Harry Potter Golden Snitch
Date Completed: November 2018
Design: Lord Libidan
Count: 14
Canvas: Ecru & Plastic
Colours: 3
Pop Culture: Harry Potter
 
I’ve done a lot of 3D cross stitches in the past, and honestly, I’m probably still best known for my series of Transforming robot cross stitches, even though I first designed the first one almost 8 years ago. However when stitching up my free sashiko inspired biscornu I realised that all my 3D stitches had one thing in common; they were all on plastic canvas.
 
This really isn’t that surprising considering that’s what its used for, but I had some across the work of robinsdesign and her 3D work. I knew her mostly for dolls, but she also created a series of planets, which end up like completed globes. The way these were consrricted were frankly amazing, but I figured it would be too hard to make the sphere smaller; until she came out with a 2.5 inch moon:

In case you were wondering, this size interested me, as the Harry Potter golden snitch was 2 inches. I decided I’d have a go at replicating the style robinsdesign used to create a tiny golden snitch. I actually thought this was going to fail, and so decided I would only stitch the main part to test the idea. In fact, I even started stitching my Portal gun cross stitch whilst I was washing and ironing it, I had that much faith, but it came out better than I thought! It isn’t perfect, however I decided to add on some wings and it was complete!

Title: USS Voyager LCARS Ship Blueprint
Date Completed: October 2018
Design: Lord Libidan
Count: 14
Canvas: Black
Colours: 13
Pop Culture: Star Trek Voyager
 
The idea for this project started nearly 2 years ago, when I had recently watched ‘The Martian’. I was instantly enthralled by the control screens on the spacecraft, on the Mars base, and in mission control. My initial idea was a reproduction of the ship schematic in smaller scale, however it just looked blocky. I knew I had to redo it, but fear of getting it wrong kept me back for a long time.

That was until I had to create a design for the first Xstitch Mag, which I decided to create a blueprint of the Apollo Saturn V, similar to my Lightsaber blueprint, ZF-1 Fifth Element gun blueprint and my Metroid Power Suit Cannon Blueprints. I realised that the element that I loved the most from The Martian screens was the ship systematic itself.
 
Move on a few months whilst I had to do some other projects, and I watched the new series of Star Trek Discovery. Finally, the whole design came together in my head. In the same way that The Martian had different screens for different ships/sections, so did Star Trek, with its LCARS programs. I had actually done some work with LCARS before in my Star Trek book, where I designed a LCARS interface, however it had a joke on it, and wasn’t something you’d see in real life. I decided therefore to have a second go, this time creating a fake panel, which you might actually find on the ship.

My favorite Star Trek is Voyager, and when searching came across a wealth of screen used designs I could draw from. I also had a framed Pokemon triptych I had been meaning to update, which has a unique long frame. Therefore I started to design a screen that you might find through out the ship itself of a full ship wide schematic including a mini map, and basic ship updates. Effectively, a quick reference map, which plays into my well known love of maps, like my Pokemon region map.
 
This is also the first time I’ve used one of the new 35 DMC colors, specifically 03, the grey at the top and bottom.