Retrofuturism Poster Cross Stitch by Lord Libidan

Title: Building Our Future
Date Completed: May 2024
Design: Lord Libidan
Count: 18
Canvas: Black
Colours: 8
Pop Culture: Retrofuturism
 
I’ve heard of many cross stitches being in the works for a long time, but with my most recent stitch, I’ve broken my all time record. This project has been in the works for over 21 years.
 
Whilst retrofuturism has started to come back into fashion now, back in 2002, it was rarely heard of. But I loved it! Couldn’t get enough. At the time I had also started designing retro travel posters for school.
Wanting to combine the two, I started constructing a triplet of retrofuturistic travel posters. At the time, I had only just started by digital artist journey and made them in pixel art. And this worked; well! But life got in the way and I only managed to complete two of the series.
 
As time went on, I did try to complete the third, most notibly in 2011 and 2013, but I just couldn’t grasp the feeling I had created with the first two. It was around here though (2016 I think) that NASA released exactly what I was trying to create. Retrofuturistic travel posters.

Now, theres were based in fact, where as mine had more of a 1950s nuclear age vibe (I played a lot of Fallout), but they had grasped the same feeling I wanted.
 
So I started redesigning the posters in digital form.
But it still wasn’t happening…
And that’s when cross stitch landed on my lap.

I had actually stitched long before this, but it was in 2016 that cross stitch took over my life, and the poster designs fell to the way side. But it wasn’t the last time that these posters came back out. A few years later I had attempted to paint the piece, but gave up after struggling with the wording.
But when I heard that Xstitch magazine was going to have a “Future” issue, I knew I had to stitch it up!
What do you think? Maybe I should continue the series?
 
Happy stitching!
Lord Libidan