You Are Overencumbered Fallout Cross Stitch by Lord Libidan

Title: You Are Overencumbered
Date Completed: January 2025
Design: ChocoCocoStitch & Lord Libidan
Count: 18
Canvas: Black
Colors: 1
Video Game: Fallout 1, 2, 3 & 76
 
When it comes to video games, a long-running joke is carrying too much in a tiny little backpack. For me, Fallout is the prime example of this. All of the games have been guilty of causing players to pick up everything in sight, but when Fallout 76 comes onto the scene, it’s a whole different thing! Literally anything that isn’t screwed down needs to be picked up. And what comes with that?
The inevitable:

You Are Overencumbered And Cannot Run

I love this phrase. I’ve always thought that “overencumbered” is in itself an overencumbered word, which just makes it even more hilarious! And it’s a phrase I’ve followed through most (Fallout 4 had a different phrase “You’re carrying too much and can’t run!”) of the Fallout world.
So it’s kind of obvious that this has always been a term written in my diary of cross stitch ideas. But despite stitching some Fallout embroidery, some Fallout cross stitch and even listing out the best Fallout cross stitch back in 2017, I’ve never been able to come up with something that works.

And believe me, I’ve tried! From branching into Zelda to making up patterns, I’ve done a whole bunch.

But recently, playing through Fallout 76, I kept getting the message pop up again and again, and it started to bubble. But it wasn’t until I stumbled upon a Fallout pattern by ChocoCocoStitch, I knew it was the pattern for me!

As with many patterns, nothing is perfect, and I found myself taking this straight to the drawing board to fix some mistakes.
The first was a simple placement thing; the word “and” should be on the second line. This would also help me turn the stitch into a bookmark when I was done, which related to another Fallout project I was doing at the same time.
The second was the border. It changes through all the games, from straight edges to no edges, to no icon, etc. But for me, the Fallout 3 version, the game I first played, was the ‘prime’ version. So I fixed up the thickness and curve to make it just perfect.

For a quick stitch over the New Year break, it was good to get back into cross stitch after doing sashiko a lot recently. And in fact, my next stitch is likely to be a Fallout one too!

 
Happy stitching!
Lord Libidan