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suddenly cats
Nov 16, 2006

Cats do not abide by the laws of nature, alright? You don't know shit about cats.
drat, those portraits are really cool! I'm tempted to try one for myself.

So I gave my newlywed friends their Godzilla cross stitch, and they loved it. :D Here's my current project:

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cool kids inc.
May 27, 2005

I swallowed a bug

suddenly cats posted:

drat, those portraits are really cool! I'm tempted to try one for myself.

So I gave my newlywed friends their Godzilla cross stitch, and they loved it. :D Here's my current project:



Well this is great. I love the party tit quote!

Angry Pie
Feb 4, 2007
Do you want a piece of me?!
If any of you do commissions (and I assume you do), how do you figure out how much to charge for them? Like, do you add up your hours on the project and multiply that by x dollars? Charge per square inch? (my mom does this for paintings, but I don't know that the two things are comparable.) Just look on etsy or wherever and see what the market will bear?

I was commissioned by a good friend for a cross stitch project that ended up taking me about 60 hours to do. I'm dumb and never talked money with her ahead of time and even if I had I didn't know how long it would take or even really where to start with an estimate. I wouldn't want to charge her as much as I would charge a stranger for the same work, but I don't even know how much I would charge that stranger.

How do y'all figure it out?

Tears In A Vial
Jan 13, 2008

I don't do commissions, but on the reddit cross-stitching board, I noted once that people seem to charge either 1 or 2 cents per stitch, plus materials. Now obviously there's a huge difference between those two prices on a big project, but I guess it gives you a place to start.

Angry Pie
Feb 4, 2007
Do you want a piece of me?!
Oh god this might finally be the time I snap and actually read reddit, I didn't know there was a cross stitching board there.

At 2 cents per it would be $240, plus $50 in materials (I used a special dyed fabric to eliminate 13000 extra stitches, plus beads, so materials were high). I dunno but $300 seems low to me but you're right it's a good place to start. Thanks!

Tears In A Vial
Jan 13, 2008

Angry Pie posted:

Oh god this might finally be the time I snap and actually read reddit, I didn't know there was a cross stitching board there.

At 2 cents per it would be $240, plus $50 in materials (I used a special dyed fabric to eliminate 13000 extra stitches, plus beads, so materials were high). I dunno but $300 seems low to me but you're right it's a good place to start. Thanks!

It's not a very nice board to be honest. I'd stay away.

At USD240 you'll have made USD4 an hour. Is that a reasonable price for you to do your hobby? It doesn't sound a lot, but you also have to wonder if someone would be willing to pay USD300 for a cross-stitch.

One thing to consider is that this isn't really your job, it's your hobby, right? Getting paid any amount to do your hobby would be nice? You just have to find a price point on your enjoyment of cross-stitching. Do you like the journey or the destination?

The people that make a living from cross-stitching are the people designing patterns and selling the PDFs.

I dunno, none of that really helps you with your quandary, but it's something to think about I guess. Sorry I couldn't be more help.

Tears In A Vial fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jul 11, 2016

Anne Whateley
Feb 11, 2007
:unsmith: i like nice words

Angry Pie posted:

Oh god this might finally be the time I snap and actually read reddit, I didn't know there was a cross stitching board there.

At 2 cents per it would be $240, plus $50 in materials (I used a special dyed fabric to eliminate 13000 extra stitches, plus beads, so materials were high). I dunno but $300 seems low to me but you're right it's a good place to start. Thanks!
That seems good in general, but in this specific case you might have to eat it to save the friendship. If you didn't talk price at all beforehand, she might be thinking $30. Ask her what she's thinking, and then go with a number on the high end of that range. You should definitely recoup the cost of your supplies and hopefully a bit more, but you might not get what you deserve here. If that's the case, make sure to mention it's a special one-time deal. It sucks, but always talk price first!

Angry Pie
Feb 4, 2007
Do you want a piece of me?!

Anne Whateley posted:

That seems good in general, but in this specific case you might have to eat it to save the friendship. If you didn't talk price at all beforehand, she might be thinking $30. Ask her what she's thinking, and then go with a number on the high end of that range. You should definitely recoup the cost of your supplies and hopefully a bit more, but you might not get what you deserve here. If that's the case, make sure to mention it's a special one-time deal. It sucks, but always talk price first!

Hah well I did say I was dumb. I honestly think I would be fine with materials plus a bit more (in this case), I'm just broke so I like to daydream about a surprise payout. Now I know for next time!

legendof
Oct 27, 2014

suddenly cats posted:

Here's my current project:

Hahaha this is my next project. My sister specifically asked for this exact thing for Christmas.

That Damn Satyr
Nov 4, 2008

A connoisseur of fine junk

Tears In A Vial posted:

One thing to consider is that this isn't really your job, it's your hobby, right? Getting paid any amount to do your hobby would be nice? You just have to find a price point on your enjoyment of cross-stitching. Do you like the journey or the destination?

As a full time artist, this is the unfortunate burden to bear when making any kind of handcraft. You are almost certainly not going to get paid what your time is worth if you count it by $/hour, especially when you are doing a project like embroidery that takes sometimes in the hundreds of hours, unless you are creating fully stitched tapestry-like pieces that appeal to a wider audience. This just isn't an art form that people understand the kind of labor that goes into it, so you will get countless dopes that will offer you $10 for the thing you've slaved for months on. I've had someone offer me $20 for my wolf bag, for instance. I laughed until I cried.

But.. yeah. That's why I don't take embroidery "commissions", per se. I enjoy the craft and I do it because it gives me a lot of inner peace. I like to gift my pieces, or if I have a friend that specifically wants something done I might accept the commission for trade for something else - even if that means they're just buying the item they're trading me. It's easier for me to quantify in my head that I can do x amount of work and be able to have Y thing to show for it. Making someone really happy is the fortunate byproduct of that. ;)

Angry Pie
Feb 4, 2007
Do you want a piece of me?!
So now that the piece is with its intended recipient, I can share photos! It was a surprise gift for someone who is, like me, From The Internet, and I didn't want to risk him seeing it anywhere.

The commission was "you two have a strange love of Nic Cage, can you make him a Nic Cage piece?" - I think it turned out pretty well. Cross stitch with beads added on.

Imgur album (I hope): http://imgur.com/a/Yj02i

suddenly cats
Nov 16, 2006

Cats do not abide by the laws of nature, alright? You don't know shit about cats.

Angry Pie posted:

Cross stitch with beads added on.

Bees?

(That is amazing. I hope he liked it!)

Arsenic Lupin
Apr 12, 2012

This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.


That is glorious!

Tears In A Vial
Jan 13, 2008

I did it... for The Rock... I did it... for The People.

Arbor
Jun 9, 2010
hey thread hey

My granny taught me how to cross stitch and a bit of embroidery when I was a wee young thing, but I haven't really messed with it in a good twenty years. I recently had a wild urge to pick it up again and freehanded a little bow.



Not exactly anything fancy or involved, but I gotta start somewhere!

It's a bit of a self-admonishment/reminder. I should add the words "tie the bow" to it as a remind to finish my projects instead of constantly being in a loop of "this sounds fun, no wait nevermind, this sounds fun, no, wait, THIS sounds fun.

Micomicona
Aug 7, 2007

Arbor posted:

hey thread hey

My granny taught me how to cross stitch and a bit of embroidery when I was a wee young thing, but I haven't really messed with it in a good twenty years. I recently had a wild urge to pick it up again and freehanded a little bow.



Not exactly anything fancy or involved, but I gotta start somewhere!

It's a bit of a self-admonishment/reminder. I should add the words "tie the bow" to it as a remind to finish my projects instead of constantly being in a loop of "this sounds fun, no wait nevermind, this sounds fun, no, wait, THIS sounds fun.

Lovely little bow, the satin stitch looks great! I always have a terrible time with satin stitch, I can never get mine to look simultaneously flat, smooth, and solid.

Beast of Bourbon
Sep 25, 2013

Pillbug
Cross posting from the general question thread, but what is the preferred embroidery software for digitizing files? My wife just purchased a brother PE770 and we want to start doing 1 color logos of various things on clothing.

We bought it new from Amazon just today, but looking online I can't find a good source for a clear "hey idiot, export the file from Illustrator as [.XXX] and then import it into [X] software and save it out as a .pes and load it and go"

Molly Bloom
Nov 9, 2006

Yes.
I dunno. I'll just stitch until I get there. Wherever there is.

Tears In A Vial
Jan 13, 2008

I cross-stitched a patch for my cut off

Affi
Dec 18, 2005

Break bread wit the enemy

X GON GIVE IT TO YA
I've just started with cross-stitch because I had a great idea for a gift for my girlfriend.

Going to do text saying (loosely translated from Swedish) "Nothing is greater then a blue whale" (Störst av allt är Blåvalen)

Then a whale under the text. Im liking the Project so far, i listen to Music and stitch. But I think I should use more then three strands of floss because I don't fill out the squares on the aida and you can kinda see the white underneath. I'd add a picture but Im on my cell.

I'm probably going to add kelp and water and maybe a bird or two.

Angry Pie
Feb 4, 2007
Do you want a piece of me?!

Affi posted:

I've just started with cross-stitch because I had a great idea for a gift for my girlfriend.

Going to do text saying (loosely translated from Swedish) "Nothing is greater then a blue whale" (Störst av allt är Blåvalen)

Then a whale under the text. Im liking the Project so far, i listen to Music and stitch. But I think I should use more then three strands of floss because I don't fill out the squares on the aida and you can kinda see the white underneath. I'd add a picture but Im on my cell.

What count Aida cloth are you using? I only ever use two strands of floss for my work (or one for backstitching) and seeing a bit of white underneath is only ever a thing with 14 count or larger. But I mean, it IS cross stitch so seeing an X is normal - I actually do more "folksy" feeling work on 14 count so you can see the X shape of the stitches.

Tlacuache
Jul 3, 2007
Cross my heart, smack me dead, stick a lobster on my head.


It took me forever and I think the learning curve is painfully visible, but I made this for some friends' anniversary present. Now back to embroidering dumb geeky throw pillows.

Philippe
Aug 9, 2013

(she/her)

Geeky throw pillows is what we all live for, dogg.

That Damn Satyr
Nov 4, 2008

A connoisseur of fine junk
Man, I have been hella bad about posting my projects here. 2016 has been poo poo and this year needs to be over so the world can get back to normal.


BUT. I'm going to be in the UK from Nov 24 to Dec 12 and have planned a lot of my trip around going to museums that have extant OA pieces. And some other neat textiles.

So... What I'm saying is real soon expect a massive loving picture dump of some history!

Micomicona
Aug 7, 2007
Yessssssss I love me some embroidery history!

Speaking of, does anyone have any recommendations for scholarly/art history books or articles on embroidery? I've trawled the local public library and a lot of the "history of embroidery" books are more collections of patterns. I guess I"m looking for more analysis.

Sage Grimm
Feb 18, 2013

Let's go explorin' little dude!
Uggghhh, working with metallic thread is the worst for cross-stitch. Especially when I decided this section needed to have two threads of different colour because either one on its own was not quite what I needed there. Tripling down when I left it to work on the other sections, coming back months later and forgetting that last bit so now I have to carefully unpick a couple rows out.

Want to get it done before Christmas because this is part two of a couples gift. Motivation is at a low ebb due to life (and lack of decent things to watch) but I'll be able to dig in this weekend. Pics to follow in a week or so!

EDIT: METALLIC THREAD STILL CHAMPION OF CRASS-SHITTINESS BUT I DON'T HAVE TO WORK WITH IT ANY MORE. Gotta clean this piece, iron it a bit then showtime.

Sage Grimm fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Dec 11, 2016

Angry Pie
Feb 4, 2007
Do you want a piece of me?!
Yeah I just used a small amount of metallic thread to make the strings on a cross stitched ukulele, and metallic thread is bullshit. So annoying to work with, I can't imagine using it for any amount of time.

vaguely
Apr 29, 2013

hot_squirting_honey.gif

I used some metallic thread for the antenna detail on a silk-stitch moth I made a couple of years ago, and I vowed to never work with that crap again
turned out nice though, the goon I made it for was very happy with it :kimchi:

current project is probably my most ambitious yet, working on a picture of my sister's dog to hopefully be finished in time for Christmas
I'll post it up in here when it's done!

Sage Grimm
Feb 18, 2013

Let's go explorin' little dude!


Went with a Norse mythology motif for the pair. It started out with the tree to give me something to do after the hogwarts crest. Then I remembered my friend used the Yggdrasil tree as a symbol a couple times so I figured it would be a perfectly good gift. However they have a partner who I am also good friends with and it would be silly to give them something applicable to only one! I asked her discretely about what she sees in him and had a couple ideas bounced back and forth until they hit upon "bird." Odin's ravens intersected perfectly!

The tree was a pixel image I found off the internet. No idea where, I had it for a year. The birds was actually a black and white vector image that I manually converted to pixel form and then decided on the colours to suit. The metallic thread is the piece in the middle that's sort of difficult to make it because jpg conversions. The image had the runic alphabet for the raven's names in the middle but it didn't feel historically accurate (I researched quite a bit during this work) so I came up with my own pun. The guy I'm giving it to loves/hates that I can come up with subtle puns on a spur the moment so this is just rubbing it in harder.

They're both framed in 8x8s, no matting.

Angry Pie
Feb 4, 2007
Do you want a piece of me?!
I love those ravens! Excellent work.

Here's a few quickies I've done for Christmas presents for very different people this year. The ukulele is about 2 inches long on plastic canvas, I've strung it to be a tree ornament. It has an all-red backing too which I forgot to take photos of before I wrapped it. No idea why these photos aren't posting inline but here's links!

http://imgur.com/a/Pyisf

http://imgur.com/a/MZJsY

http://imgur.com/a/5LFXp

Angry Pie fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Dec 25, 2016

Fatkraken
Jun 23, 2005

Fun-time is over.
I've been getting back into Cross Stitch as of late (pics when I get around to them, just nerdy pixel art so far), enjoying it a lot and hoping to embark on some decent sized projects in the coming months

I have a question though. I really like some of the other embroidery in this thread, especially the silk shaded animals and similar. Obviously Aida is only good for cross stitch and other grid based techniques, and I'd need a different backing fabric, but can I use the same threads for other embroidery styles? I'm starting to build up a reasonable array of colours and it would be nice to be able to use them for other jobs. I also have a set of about 50 different coloured regular sewing threads (came bundled in with my last sewing machine), are these any use for anything? With either, they don't have to be absolutely optimal, just acceptable as I am definitely not able to afford the money or headspace for another load of supplies in a sufficient number of colours to be worthwhile.

Angry Pie
Feb 4, 2007
Do you want a piece of me?!
Embroidery floss is good for all sorts of embroidery, cross stitch or not. I've never used sewing machine thread on an embroidery project but it's not like the Craft Police are going to come arrest you - try it out and see how it works! I would think it'd be too thin but you don't know until you try.

That Damn Satyr
Nov 4, 2008

A connoisseur of fine junk
Use whatever you like! I've always used plain DMC because I'm poor and silk is hecka expensive. Chloe Giordano uses cotton sewing thread to make her ultra finely detailed creations.

As for backing fabric - get a nice cotton or linen. I started my embroidery career stitching on osnaburg muslin, and it's what I give out to all students in my beginner classes. It's tough and can stand up to pulling out a lot of stitches, but isn't super loosely woven either so you can play with packing stitches. Just hem or tape the edges first because that poo poo frays like no tomorrow.

Angry Pie posted:

it's not like the Craft Police are going to come arrest you.

This is my new favorite quote.

That Damn Satyr fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Feb 2, 2017

Fatkraken
Jun 23, 2005

Fun-time is over.

That drat Satyr posted:

Use whatever you like! I've always used plain DMC because I'm poor and silk is hecka expensive.

heh, I find DMC hecka expensive, I'm not working to charts so colour matching only needs to be approximate so I'm on off-brand 6-strand threads that are about 1/3 the price of DMC (I have some leftover DMC from an old project too that I mix in where the colours are useful)

Tears In A Vial
Jan 13, 2008

The off-brand stuff might not be colour-fast or whatever, so be careful if you wash it, but yeah man, do whatever you want. I find DMC thread super expensive in the UK, but i generally need super-specific colours for portraits and things, so I'm kinda locked in.

Someone on reddit recently did a comparison between official DMC stuff and knock-off chinese stuff from aliexpress, lemme grab that for you...

https://www.reddit.com/r/CrossStitch/comments/30rg1y/chinese_floss_vs_dmc_how_does_the_cheap_stuff/

it's pretty interesting, in as much as this can be interesting...



Top half of each colour is DMC, bottom half is aliexpress.




anyway, I recently drilled a buncha holes in a moleskine diary and cross stitched it because i'm bored of just stitching fabric.


https://www.instagram.com/p/BPUsYqhhvaF/?taken-by=ksclark

Micomicona
Aug 7, 2007

quote:


anyway, I recently drilled a buncha holes in a moleskine diary and cross stitched it because i'm bored of just stitching fabric.


https://www.instagram.com/p/BPUsYqhhvaF/?taken-by=ksclark

Metal as gently caress. I love embroidery on non-fabric things!

vaguely
Apr 29, 2013

hot_squirting_honey.gif

Fatkraken posted:

heh, I find DMC hecka expensive, I'm not working to charts so colour matching only needs to be approximate so I'm on off-brand 6-strand threads that are about 1/3 the price of DMC (I have some leftover DMC from an old project too that I mix in where the colours are useful)

a long rear end time ago i bought a 250-skein off-brand pack on Amazon for £12.50 and just pick out whatever colours are close enough to what seems appropriate for my projects
the colour selection is kinda not fantastic (they have like 3 purples and 2 pinks, and an endless supply of puke greens) but it's been fine for my casual use and should last me another few years
i also have a bunch of fabric off-cuts from old dressmaking projects that i use as backing for my non cross-stitch work, and while some of them are easier to work on than others, there's not really a wrong choice tbh just use whatever you have lyin around for a hobby that is essentially free

Fatkraken
Jun 23, 2005

Fun-time is over.
my leftover DMC in my project box is so very nice compared to the cheaper stuff (which is fine but not spectacular), it's silkier, shinier, less prone to snagging and has a more consistent thickness. I HAVE found a couple of suppliers on Etsy who do DMC threads for a fraction of the UK price and competitive with the trimits/VA/random brands I usually get, but they're all based abroad and shipping would eat up any savings unless I buy about 30+ skeins. I'm not ready to do that *just* yet, but when I get a big cash injection later in the year I might treat myself and get like 100 colours if I'm still feeling the cross-stitch/embroidery vibe.

Or I could just get the full 447 of chinese knockoff colours for about 30 quid...

Is there a good cheap or free program for taking a pixel image and approximating a DMC colour chart from it? I wanna make some pieces based on really complex SNES era sprite art that has a ton of colours in very small blocks with complex shading, and it's hard to tell which blocks are even the same colour, let alone pick out a decent set of colours to use

Fatkraken fucked around with this message at 09:22 on Feb 6, 2017

legendof
Oct 27, 2014

Fatkraken posted:


Is there a good cheap or free program for taking a pixel image and approximating a DMC colour chart from it? I wanna make some pieces based on really complex SNES era sprite art that has a ton of colours in very small blocks with complex shading, and it's hard to tell which blocks are even the same colour, let alone pick out a decent set of colours to use

I use cstitch, which I believe is a recommendation I got from this thread. It's pretty straightforward to use and is available for free for Windows and Linux (and probably also Mac, I just haven't used it on Mac).

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Fatkraken
Jun 23, 2005

Fun-time is over.

legendof posted:

I use cstitch, which I believe is a recommendation I got from this thread. It's pretty straightforward to use and is available for free for Windows and Linux (and probably also Mac, I just haven't used it on Mac).

grabbed it, seems to do the job nicely.

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