Sublime Stitching X Handmade Nation

One of the new embroidery patterns from Sublime Stitching is a tie-in to the forthcoming documentary Handmade Nation. Sublime Stitching is of course the company of Jenny Hart, of the Austin Craft Mafia; Handmade Nation is the film coming out next year, made by Fayth Levine.

Hart is also going to be at Maker Faire in Austin this weekend, along with fellow ACM founder Jennifer Perkins. Details here. Hart, Perkins, and Levine are all in the chapter of Buying In that looks at DIYism etc. Follow-up interviews with Hart and Perkins on this site are here and here. (And one with Tina Sparkles, also an ACM founder who’s in the book, is here.)

I think a promotional tie-in embroidery pattern is a really great idea. Believe it or not, there was a moment in the runup to the release of Buying In when I included embroidery patterns among my suggestions for unusual promotional giveaways for the book. There was actually a meeting devoted to this general subject, where I was shown the promotional giveaway material for another book my publisher had put out earlier — I remember it included a mouse pad.

My thinking was it seemed out of step with Buying In‘s themes to create and distribute low-utility objects. So I had this idea about opting instead for iron-ons and stencils and maybe patches, and, yes, embroidery patterns — basically anything that could be used to transform an existing object, instead of creating a new object. I thought that would be sort of a cool comment, and something different and, you know, in the spirit of the book’s attitude toward material culture and how we should think about it.

In the end there were no promotional objects for the book. Which also works with those themes, in a way, I suppose.