The Cutting (& Stitching) Edge – Xmas Love

We agreed to do these Xmas Love posts a wee while ago, and it’s only now, as I sit down to write my post, that I realise what a fantastic year 2009 has been.

This time last year, I’d begun taken steps towards putting this blog thing in order, and I’d begun discussions with Beefranck to see if she wanted to come and do some posting on here, but I had no idea that we’d end up where we are now. It’s truly amazing and I’m very grateful.

To bore you with a couple of facts and figures for a moment, since we started properly counting our visitors at the end of April we have had just over 90000 visitors to this site, with over 151000 visits from 152 countries. Which is all a bit mindblowing, and with just over 1000 people subscribing to our RSS feed I feel very honoured to be here doing this right now.

One of the best aspects of this whole experience has been the chance to meet so many talented people and to beg and plead with talk them into doing swaps with me.  It’s been a banner year for the contemporary embroidery collection at Mr X Stitch Towers and I thought I’d share a few of them with you.

This piece by Stitch Out Loud puts a real smile on my face whenever I see it. It lives happily in my lounge and pretty much sums up my life. In case you didn’t know, these are some of the hot chicks referred to.

This piece I got from Adam Moe as part of the first Phat Quarter swap is astounding. It’s very different from his normal (also excellent) stuff and I’m honoured to have it.

Beefranck and I both share a healthy affection for Bascom Hogue. When I swapped with him I was blown away to receive this piece, featuring stitching and pen and ink work. It sits in front of my desk and I love it to bits. I spend a lot of time pondering who the two men in the top car are, and why they are hurrying. And what is going to happen when they run into the couple in the bottom car. A myriad of possibilities exist… Thanks Bascom!

The swap I did with MimiLoveForever was very special – Mimi’s such a fantastic talent that she was able to incorporate this photo of my three golden hens into the work. And then explode it with awesomeness. And for all her efforts, she received this piece from me. You can commission Mimi to do one of these fantastic portraits for you, and I’d thoroughly recommend it!

Ruby42 and Beefranck are responsible for the next piece, which was sent to me out of the blue. Once upon a time I got a sketch of myself done by Sean Phillips and those pair of stitchy sneaks went and stitched it up for me! Were it not for the scary looking face in the middle of it, it would be a fantastic piece of work. This was definitely one of the nicest gifts I’ve had!

And finally, I scored this terrific X from WhatDelilahDid – she has truly mastered taming metallic threads and uses them to produce elegant beautiful works. If you haven’t got one of her pieces yet, what are you waiting for?!

I could go on. I could tell you about some of the cool plush pieces I’ve managed to obtain over the past year, like Ron Burgundy by Phil Barbato, like Baba Yaga by Melissa Sue Stanley, like Mike D by Astulabee, I could go on all day.

But instead I shall draw this post to a close.

There’s so much fantastic stitchy talent out there, and it’s terrific that Mr X Stitch has evolved to a place where you can discover this talent, and more than that, drop that talent a line and talk them into swapping with you. If you want to do some swapping next year, keep checking the boards at the Phat Quarter as we’ve got plans for more swaps in the not-too-distant future.