Designing our own Crash Bandicoot sampler, wedding edition (part 1)

So, this has been a long time coming! Ever since The Wonderful Smaz and I started making serious plans for our wedding ceremony, I knew I wanted to sew my own sampler to commemorate it (like how a Poundland 'wedding plate' is rolled out for every Royal wedding - except, y'know, far better). However, I didn't really know where to start - I knew I wanted it to be Crash-themed, but that was really about it.

Designing this one first really helped, especially when it turned out better than I pictured. Forever a cheapskate, I am still using graph paper, and my resulting designs have become very dog eared, crumpled, and liable to change at any moment. At my day job, they call this a 'living document'.

There are so many elements about my first sampler that I really like but the iconic items (crystals, gems, crates) were particularly fun to work on, so I used that idea of iconic as a starting point:

The top four panels are based off the wall textures from the levels Sunset Vista and The Lost City in the first ever Crash game. Smaz and I have always loved the aesthetic of these levels, and the music's pretty damned catchy too.

 

And below, our names worked in backstitch, the classic Crash icon on the left (again, introduced in the first game although you can see it in the N-Sane Trilogy edition too), Aku Aku on the right, and the Wumpa fruit with clear gems in the middle space - all four of these, can't get much more iconic than that!

I picked ecru aida as I really love the look of unbleached fabric; I get why if you're not a fan, but to me there's a beauty in no two similar pieces. It adds a lot of texture and interest to my needlework and in the case of bright colours (see Aku) it really makes the design pop.

Stay tuned for part 2 ...