Stitch-a-long theme?

[blackmageheart]

Not exactly. People could contribute a band and then those would be put up and everyone makes a sampler as big or as small as they'd like. Although one giant pattern would be cool ne? But it would be 3 patterns if it was 3 games. Gah, it's complicated to explain. Those numbers would be for a 18 count and smaller tho.

BMH, help?

Right. Firstly, let me explain what one is, for those who don't know. A band sampler is just what it says, a sampler made of bands. Each band traditionally had the sample stitches that a woman or girl learned and she'd put them in to a sampler to remember them. Later the samplers just became decorative.
What I think m4pl3 is suggesting is that everyone design a band with things from one of the games and submit it, then everyone has a selection of bands to choose from. They could be mixed and matched to make something fairly unique, while all working from the same pattern set. Then we'd add our names like a proper sampler. The bands could be a row of pokeballs, or Zelda items, or whatever.

Does that make sense? It's only 9:30am and I've only had one cup of tea and no meds so I'm not fully with it yet

[Miss Clawful]

Googled it. Now I know. And knowing is half the battle.

Hmm, seems it could be interesting. Something like this would certainly work for video games, especially the repetitive nature of tile usage for backgrounds. Already formulating some ideas.

[Knittenkitten]

I like this idea too. Could we do more than just 3 games tho? I'm fairly certain I could get my bf interested in this but he's a lot more interested in games that haven't gotten a lot of mention on the forums.

[katdun]

Now that I understand what you mean about the sampler , that could be fun! If people made a pattern for a band from their favorite games without putting a limit on the number of games we make patterns for, there should be lots of games to choose from and everyone should be able to find something they like. And if some people don't have time to stitch their own sampler, they could still participate by making a pattern for everybody else and watching them come together. Or one band would probably be about bookmark-size, I would think. Great idea, m4pl3g1rl, and thanks for explaining, BMH!

[m4pl3g1rl]

I actually like the idea of a plethora of game bands to choose from. Since, y'know, gamers are a diverse lot and we all have multiple interests, it would be cool to see what everyone comes up with.

[blackmageheart]

OK the sampler idea seems to have legs! I love the idea of multiple games, too.

So, I guess there's more than one choice, now. Sampler or colouring book? Which games?

[lcockitt]

For the sampler, could you make it into a 2 month challenge perhaps? The first month could be for designing the bands, the second month for stitching them. Hopefully this would mean there would be a biiiiig choice of band samplers to stitch, from a large variety of games, then people can choose the ones they want to stitch.

[RMDC]

OMG I LOVE BOTH IDEAS HOW TO CHOOSE

I really like modular crafts, and both of these are so modular it hurts.

Frankly, the sampler bands will probably be easier to do first, since it doesn't require as much prep work - like lcockitt says, if we do one month of "presentations" and another month of stitching, it'll be gravy. Doing the coloring book requires making outlines first, then selecting floss colors and a second design stage where we're all deciding how to fill in the outlines.

I propose we do sampler bands this time, and maybe also vote on the theme(s) we'll use for a coloring book SAL (perhaps a mini-SAL later in the year?) so that a cadre of us can craft the outline patterns in the background; that way they'll be ready to roll out on day 1 of the coloring book SAL.

[Eliste]

I'll be honest, the idea of a sampler bores me. I've done tons Of them, and really have no desire to do it in just cross stitch. For me samplers are really about learning new techniques, and I don't see this challenge working as that. I'm not fond of them visually either.

So I'd much rather go for colourings book idea, but I'm opinionated and not stopping there. I've done a lot of stitchalongs and honestly, if you have more than one pattern to pick from, you don't get the same feel at all. Scaling it up would work fine as you'll still see the same image, but when there are multiple patterns it just feels like everyone is doing their own thing and not a stitch a long. You may as well just have a "do what you want" challenge.

You'll never please everyone, so I'd suggest pick one game, and one pattern (although maybe 2-3 sizes of it) and let the colors picking be the difference. It makes it feel very cool as you see the differences between people's choices. It also limits the scope and overwhelming feeling of "what do I do?" and at least for me it helps me to keep up as I can compare progress to others. Seeing the same image show up, in many different ways, is really the pleasure of a stitch a long for me.

[m4pl3g1rl]

Eliste does bring up a good point, one that I hadn't considered. I agree that if we don't do the same thing, or at least similar things, then it won't feel stitch-a-long-y.

If we didn't want to give up on the sampler idea then we could have a month to get band patterns out, and then vote on them for our top 10 favorites or so, and then stitch it. I'm still excited for a stitch-a-long no matter what.