I'm blown away by Victoria's work, of NeedlePopCrafts. We're so lucky to be able to offer her Barbara Kruger piece as a Special Deluxe kit, with 8 skeins of DMC floss! For each kit sold, $7.00 will be donated to The Brigid Alliance.
Here's her story:
My mom taught me how to cross stitch in middle school, but I didn’t really become serious about it as a hobby until recently (mostly to offset the existential dread of terminally online millennial-hood). Last year I fell in love with that trend of miniaturizing classic paintings and wanted to see if I could design my own versions from more contemporary sources – movie posters, abstract expressionism, counterculture art, that kinda thing. It’s a really fun challenge, paring a familiar image down to its most recognizable elements and then recreating it from scratch in a 32 bit format!
Based on an iconic feminist work by Barbara Kruger, “Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground)” was a gift for my local boxing instructor to thank her for encouraging my small business aspirations; in addition to being one of my favorite pieces, I thought it fit the gym’s pop art decor really well. As much as I wish the message weren’t even more timely now, I hope that sharing it to raise money for reproductive rights is a sufficient way to honor Kruger’s mass media culture-jamming roots.
You can find more examples of my work at @NeedlePopCrafts on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, and pick up the patterns for yourself on Etsy, Gumroad, or Ko-Fi.
Also, big thanks to Subversive Cross Stitch for giving me this platform in the first place – I was a huge fan of these patterns even before I’d become an active~fiber artist~ myself, so it’s an honor to get noticed at all, let alone be featured!
Thank YOU, Victoria, for sharing your amazing work with us! This is really tricky to create and you seem to be the best at it!