Ikea, that Swedish manufacturer of furniture that we hate to love, released a free cross-stitch pattern. The company shared the design on May 17th for International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia & Biphobia (IDAHOTB) and is called Home Pride Home. Click on the links above and scroll to the bottom of their page to find it.
It is a sweet, pretty pattern complete with unicorns, and it looks like a fun stitch. Take a quick look at the instructions though which are done in Ikea’s typical diagram style giving experienced stitchers a laugh on social media. See this Instagram post by Stephanie Rohr of stephxstitch, and this Reddit sub on Cross-stitch.
People have certainly become leery of corporations and their so-called support especially during Pride Month here in the United States where companies just seem to slap a rainbow flag on their logos and sell related products. You can find a slew of memes about it on BuzzFeed, Mashable, or Reddit. There is even a term for it now: rainbow capitalism. I appreciated this short interview on PBS.org and the concerns they raised.
“Let’s build a world where we all feel at home” is what begins Ikea’s community engagement page where the pattern link is hosted. It then includes a list of what people can do to be supportive of these marginalized communities, but it’s clearly lacking on what the company itself can do. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve heard of International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia & Biphobia (IDAHOTB) before this, and someone in the Cross-stitch subReddit comments assumed the acronym was the Swedish name of the design. Yikes.
Rhys of Lord Libidan, cross-stitch artist and blogger, wrote about Ikea’s cross-stitch designs back in 2018. It was interesting to learn that Ikea’s previous incarnations of cross-stitch weren’t always stitchable patterns, but that aside Rhys also goes into the history of Ikea’s odd connection with cross-stitch. Read it here.
It’s still a cute pattern though.
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