cross-stitch

QR-3D: Can Textile Versions of QR Codes Work?

| Betsy

One of the greatest things about being involved in the world of craft is the people you meet. Over the years, I’ve come to befriend two very talented crafters and thinkers, Sally Fort and Inga Hamilton, aka Rockpool Candy*. A few months ago, Sally got the idea that some project needed to be done… and invited Inga and I to brainstorm on just what this project was. After about a bazillion awesome emails where we traded thoughts and inspirations and ideas back and forth, we kept asking ourselves questions surrounding QR codes and textiles, mainly:

Can they (QR codes) be functional and direct people to places on the internet?

How can QR codes be created in textile form?

How can designers, crafters, makers, tinkerers, artists, coders and interested dabblers use textile QR codes to send viewers to interesting places?

How can an internationally and digitally collaborative project share ways of working and increase opportunities for exposure and networking?

And thus, QR-3D was born.

And asks for YOUR participation should you be obliged to join in this project with us! Some amazing codes have already been sent in, which you can see over here and here, over at the QR-3D pool at Flickr.

*Be sure to go read the Rockpool Candy post on how she made her QR code using codes from her and her husband, combining them to be a “matrimony code,” the end result being the headboard for their bed!! Holy heck it’s awesome.



P.S. Recently I asked to participate in an Artist Series over at Unconsumption. You can see my project here, where I used a Radical Cross Stitch tutorial on how to cross stitch on clothes to cross stitch Unconsumption’s logo Mr. Cart on to a t-shirt using a chart made by Cat Mazza’s knitPro!



candy + craft = lovely.

| Betsy


The pretty little candies above were waiting to be eaten at a hotel I was checking into the other day. Even though they were almost too gorgeous too eat, I found a butterscotch one soon after I took this photo. Yum.

In talking to the desk clerk, apparently the hotel manager saw the candies at another rival hotel and liked them so much that she bought them for her lobby, too.

A few days earlier, in another hotel, I finished the above cross-stitch pieces for the show “Craftivism” at the Lawton Gallery at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay curated by Faythe Levine. The show opened today and will be open until October 30th.

The pieces are #2 and #3 in my International Anti-War Graffiti Cross-stitch series. Although I still use lots of yarn in things, I do love the cross-stitch and the radical cross-stitchers who make lovely things with lots of teeny tiny x’s. The pieces above are around 30,000 stitches apiece!

And speaking of radical crafts, check out the new Holiday 2008 issue of Vogue Knitting for a lovely article by the amazing Shannon Okey called “The Politics of Knitting!” If you don’t feel like reading the paper version, you can read the article online here!