Aromantic Narratives and Creativity
As I post weekly pride patch patterns on Patreon, here’s a monthly round-up for non-subscribers!
Folks who need help with materials, stitching, finishing or attaching patches should check out my tutorial master page.
Previous patterns are available at my pattern gallery.
As I post weekly pride patch patterns on Patreon, here’s a monthly round-up for non-subscribers!
Folks who need help with materials, stitching, finishing or attaching patches should check out my tutorial master page.
Previous patterns are available at my pattern gallery.
A couple of years ago, I posted a tutorial for making pride-themed arrow cross-stitch patches. Unfortunately, the template I used back then made it difficult (read: time-consuming) for me to post patterns covering flag style and stripe variants. This isn’t the case with my current template, so for Aro Week I thought I’d update my arrow patterns to cover a greater selection of aromantic flags … starting with simple horizontal stripes.
Folks who need help with materials, stitching, finishing or attaching patches should check out my tutorial master page.
Previous patterns are available at my pattern gallery.
Continuing in my quest to post something each day of @aggressivelyarospec‘s Aggressively Arospectacular 2021 event, today’s offering is for folks who can’t cross stitch their own pride patches: a set of pixel art icons and digital stickers based on my 10 x 12 aro alphabet letters.
These stickers are available for personal or non-commercial use with credit to one of my accounts.
If you’re after identities not shown above, or simplified (no border or drop shadow) versions better for Tumblr icons, please head over to Aro Arrows! I’m now posting images in icon and sticker styles for a variety of aromantic-spectrum and related flags with three, four, six and twelve horizontal stripes.
Are you an aromantic or otherwise queer person wanting letter patches using pride flags with three, four, six or even twelve horizontal stripes? Are you craving patches that read “cupioromantic” or “oriented aroace”? Do you yearn to sew a “fuck the binary” patch in the colours of the non-binary pride flag? I now have frame-patch patterns suitable for three, four and six-stripe flags plus a complete rescaling of my five-stripe lower-case alphabet!
These rescaled patterns will let you stitch words and letters in the colours of any horizontal three, four, six and twelve-stripe flag design. Every letter also fits inside the new 10 x 12 block version of my A is for Aro frame pattern, massively expanding the range of identities encompassed by my icon-style letter patches.
You’ll need familiarity with cross stitch (full crosses and fractional stitches) and backstitch to make unedged patches, along with a buttonhole/closed blanket stitch to make the edged patches shown above. The first instalment of this patch tutorial series demonstrates cross and blanket/buttonhole stitch, while the second covers backstitch.
Folks after patterns suitable for five and ten-stripe pride flags should check out my 8 x 10 Aro Alphabet and my 8 x 10 Letter Patch tutorials.
Continue reading “Pride Patch Tutorial: Aromantic Alphabet, Part Two”
I’ll admit it: I’m not a fan of generic positivity. Maybe I am a bitter, loveless aro … and maybe I’m a disabled person who’s tired of how the ableds implore me to “look on the bright side” and “be grateful it isn’t worse”. Either way, in my opinion, there’s a special place in hell reserved for whomever first uttered the words “live, laugh, love”!
Given that such phrases aren’t to my taste, I hadn’t planned on stitching this kit … until I saw them on clearance for $2 AUD. Why not practice my satin stitch by giving one an idemromantic makeover during Victoria’s fifth lockdown?
If you’ve been following my tutorials, you may have spent the best part of a year cross stitching your own pride patches. I’ve been sewing to occupy my hands while streaming TV during Victoria’s covid-19 lockdowns, so I’ve ended up with a lot of patches. What better thing to make with them than the ultimate in pride clothing–a one-of-a-kind pride jacket?
I used a cropped denim jacket from K-Mart that I got on clearance, as I had no access to op/thrift shops or other retail clothing shops during lockdown. Whatever jacket or coat you have on hand should work, although it is easier to work with thinner denim.
This tutorial describes tips and techniques for hand sewing patches onto a jacket, which is the cheapest but most difficult and time-consuming (or occupying!) method of attachment. If you use a heat and bond or iron-on adhesive product, much of this tutorial won’t apply, but you may still find useful the sections on layout and temporary adhesion.
Continue reading “Pride Patch Tutorial: The Patch Jacket, Part One”
After a night of revelations to her dead aunt Rosie and her living brother Esher, Mara Hill must dare another with Benjamin Lisbet. If she’s truly the woman Mara hopes, surely Benjamin will be receptive to a conversation of the “I love you and want to be with you, just not romantically” sort? Surely this afternoon won’t stray beyond Mara’s preparations of a picnic basket, chives, rehearsed speeches and less-rumpled clothing?
Yet her months of searching for magic to refresh her fading love means there’s too much she doesn’t know about Benjamin. Too much Mara needs to know to hold this conversation without losing Benjamin’s friendship.
Mara thought speaking of her fading love under cover of dark difficult enough … but speaking of romance in daylight is another challenge entirely.
Does the world understand what upon it sets so great a value?
Continue reading “Fiction: The Mundane Progression of Premortem Colloquy, Part Two”
After a night of revelations to her dead aunt Rosie and her living brother Esher, Mara Hill must dare another with Benjamin Lisbet. If she’s truly the woman Mara hopes, surely Benjamin will be receptive to a conversation of the “I love you and want to be with you, just not romantically” sort? Surely this afternoon won’t stray beyond Mara’s preparations of a picnic basket, chives, rehearsed speeches and less-rumpled clothing?
Yet her months of searching for magic to refresh her fading love means there’s too much she doesn’t know about Benjamin. Too much Mara needs to know to hold this conversation without losing Benjamin’s friendship.
Mara thought speaking of her fading love under cover of dark difficult enough … but speaking of romance in daylight is another challenge entirely.
In so long fearing her inability to stay in love, she has donned fear’s cloaking veil of abstraction and self-obsession.
Continue reading “Fiction: The Mundane Progression of Premortem Colloquy, Part One”
Aro Worlds 