Awesome Pillow, Redux

Surprise! It’s time for the ever-intriguing mystery of the awesome pillow’s creator to finally see the light of day…and it is I!

And yet, that header image is still a pixellated mess, isn’t it? Perhaps some build-up is in order, even though I’m fairly sure most of you have already scrolled down to see the final result.

Starting when I was around fourteen or fifteen, I would be hired by friends and family to cross-stitch things. Mostly keychains (where I’m from, it’s actually kind of a trend. Get your license, get a personalized cross-stitch keychain. My city is odd sometimes), but I also got a lot of requests for pillows as well. Eventually, I decided I wanted, for once, to keep something I made. This decision quickly turned into “I want to sew something geeky for someone else!”

This “someone else” was a dear friend of mine, Greg. You may see him poking around the site from time to time. He was around that time just starting work at a new hospital, and I wanted to get him a (belated) moving-in present (I was unable to fashion White Mage robes for him to wear to work). I did, however, buy some canvas and used some extra yarn I had, and tried to draw a four-inch Mega Man that I could sew and turn into a little tchotchke.

It was a complete failure. I will freely admit to having no talent when it comes to drawing, but I’d rather thought transferring an 8-bit figure onto what is effectively a sheet of graphing paper would be a fairly easy project. I was a complete fool. My failed Mega Man soon saw the bottom of the trash can.

Yet, I had all of this extra yarn, and the desire to make something geeky for a good friend of mine. So when inspiration struck, I called Greg and asked him one question. “What’s your favorite Mega Man game?”

Being the videogame philosophers we are, a short conversation about what constitutes “favorite” entailed. We finally decided to chuck out the concept of story (yes, Mega Man games actually have storylines!), overall gameplay and replayability, and music, and focused solely on the Robot Masters.

“Mega Man 2,” he’d responded immediately (good choice).

“Great,” I’d replied. “Now forget I ever asked you that.”

Six months later, I went to visit Greg, and packed in my suitcase was a puffy blue throw pillow, cross-stitched to near perfection, roughly 12″x12″, displaying his favorite Mega Man game.

BOOYAH.

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure — I obviously didn’t draw anything on that pillow. As I mentioned before, I have zero skill when it comes to drawing or graphic design. I hired an artist to draw the pattern, and I had help fashioning the actual pillow (see the piping around it?). But the rest of the manual labor…that’s all me. The number of times I accidentally poked my fingertips with the needle was astronomical.

That pillow was the last thing I’ve sewed, and honestly, I think I kind of miss it. It’s been a few years now, and I’m ready again. Anyone have any ideas?