Join our chums at Craftster tonight, May 21st, from 4-6pm PDT for Happy Hour! They’ll be slashing prices in the their Shop by 30% for two hours only! Tons of crafty tees, kids clothes, necklaces, and even the Handmade Nation DVD! This is their biggest discount ever, so cozy up with the drink of your choice and start shopping!

Time for another look at some of the great work featured in the forums at Craftster. Note: Although they’re the pick of this week, they may have appeared before this week.

To paraphrase* an infamous American Supreme Court decision, “I can’t define art quilts, but I know them when I see them.”  When I saw Seamlessgem’s post on craftster, I knew immediately her project was at least as much art as it was quilt.

She made this for her man for his birthday and included both her and her son’s hand prints in the quilting.  It’s a ancient and powerful image, the hand print, and a wonderfully personal inclusion in this wonderful piece.

Check out the craftster post to see her freehand machine embroidered title and signature.

*This is what is called “taraphrasing” around here, since I’m wont to misquote.  Ahem.

Time for another look at some of the great work featured in the forums at Craftster. Note: Although they’re the pick of this week, they may have appeared before this week.

Shaebay has once again shown us all how awesome she is by creating this underwear themed quilt.

I can’t get over how much I love this. And so much work went into it! Read more about it in Shaebay’s original post – and to see more from her, check out her flickr photostream or her etsy store. Trust me, it’s all good!

Time for another look at some of the great work featured in the forums at Craftster. Note: Although they’re the pick of this week, they may have appeared before this week.

Usually it’s the details that make or break an item and in the case of Snowday’s entry into Craftster Challenge #47: Reusable Shopping Bags the embroidery takes it from super practical and dang cute to exquisitely attractive.

She use both machine embroidery

and hand embroidery.

She thoughtfully designed this bag and went the extra 1.60934 kilometers to re-purpose materials she had on hand including old clothing and a bicycle intertube!  Check out the original craftster post to see all the amazing details.

As soon as I saw this piece by xperimentl, I fell in love with it.

It’s positive, it’s cute, and it’s quirky. When I read her post I found out that she was inspired by a print in this etsy store – which she found through ANOTHER post on Craftster:

This piece was stitched by arimethia, whose original post can be found here. She made this as a sweet and thoughtful gift for a friend.

This is one of the things we really love about Craftster. It gives crafty people the opportunity to share things with each other, which leads to more and more wonderful things being made. When is the last time you were inspired to create something after reading a post on Craftster?

Free-motion machine embroidery that creates recognizable images stuns me.  Because this is so personal and seems to capture the essence of the subject it stuns me doubly.

You can read the details of Seamlessgem’s creation on her craftster post.  See how she creatively uses this piece to help display another on her flickr.

One of the many cool things about occasionally helping out around Mr. X Stitch is getting to show off the stellar work of the other people behind the scenes here at MXS HQ.

Beefranck is a genius at combining old-fashioned cross stitch borders, fonts and motifs with contemporary themes such as pop culture references and expletives.  Gen-i-us.  Plus she’s a dang good stitcher.

Not exactly sure what this is all about?  Beefranck was inspired by her hatred of this commercial.

2009 has drawn to a close. As 2010 begins, it’s time to take a look back before moving forward.

Each year Craftster selects projects from all of the categories in the forums and puts together a list that contains the cream of the crop for the previous year. Let’s take a look at Craftster’s Best of 2009 for the needlework section!

Playing with color and texture by Mrs. Kitty

If this doesn’t tell her how I feel, nothing will by whateverjames

Sunny Buick day of the dead portrait by Anya Kase

Ship pillowcase by weighanchor

Matisse pillow by contrariwise

These are all excellent pieces. Be sure to see the best of the other sections of the Craftster forums here!

Time for another look at some of the great work featured in the forums at Craftster. Note: Although they’re the pick of this week, they may have appeared before this week.

This week’s pick is from coincollect408, who made this amazing Star Trek cross stitch.

As she describes in her original post, this beast took 8 months to stitch and has 17 colors. Its final frontier will be a pillow – perhaps to be placed on a couch somewhere in a new civilization where no man has gone before… or, more likely, coincollect408′s living room.

Christmas is over. Now it’s time to deal with the aftermath.

The horror. The sweet, delicious HORROR.

We’re going to take some time off to recover. We’ll see you back here on Monday, January 4th!

(And be sure to check out RaraAvis‘ post about making these wonderfully expressive gingerbread men here. )