"You made me!"

As I mentioned, I've been keen to embroider, although I've been waiting on some fabric from my sister to really let it rip. But I wanted to do something in the meantime.

It's sort of a given these days to do pop culture embroidery -- it makes what most people think of as an old-fashioned granny thing relevant and hip. So many 30 Rock and Arrested Development quotes on hoops out there. Not that there's anything wrong with that! I'm guilty of worse. Also, I like embroidering text. There's something satisfying about it. But I didn't really want to do something that was pithy that I wouldn't actually want to display somewhere after making it.

I decided to do this go-to phrase from Adventure Time. Adventure Time in general is a go-to for me and this isn't even the first creative project I've done this year with AT characters. I actually quite feel like the Earl of Lemongrab on a deep level. He struggles to relate and to know his purpose, and so do I. He's high-strung, ridiculous, and annoying, and so am I.

I didn't really plan out anything, as I just did the first thing that came to mind, but applique became part of the process almost immediately. I used to do tons of applique with felt, and now I rarely do (the last time was when I was stitching felt lollipops onto tulle for my Princess Lolly Halloween costume), but I knew I could do a better job actually constructing Lemongrab out of felt than I could embroidering him. So he's both embroidered and appliqued, with the exception of his nose, which is just glued on.

I just kicked back and worked on it while listening to Daft Punk, going from start to finish in a few hours.

But look, a little rainbow fell across him as I was taking pictures. Acceptable!!