AUG | Seven at One Blow

"Seven at one blow!" In Grimm's fairy tale, a little tailor swats seven flies with a single slap, stitches the boast onto his belt and sets out into the world. Everyone who reads it thinks he means seven men, and the bluff carries him past giants, a unicorn and a wild boar, all the way to a royal wedding.

I dressed the whole AUG in cross-stitch, as if the tailor had stitched it himself: cream Aida cloth, with every picture a grid of raised X stitches. The story is told only in pictures. There is no lettering anywhere on the gun.

The story on the gun

• The belt: along the top of the stock, right where you look in first person. It's the tailor's belt with its gold buckle and the seven flies stitched along it.
• Left side: the bread and jam that drew the flies, the tailor's scissors and buttons, and the little tailor himself, holding his needle like a lance while flies buzz round him.
• Right side: the unicorn with its horn stuck in the tree, the wild boar and the crown.
• Magazine: the giant on one side. On the other, the bird the tailor "threw" so high it never came down, flying off among the clouds.
• Rail: bunting for the wedding the tale ends with.
• Scope: hearts and flowers between two red threads tied round it, and a clean lilac-to-rose coated lens.

The tailor's tools

• The barrel is the tailor's needle: polished steel with red thread wound on it.
• The charging handle is a steel thimble.
• The foregrip is a spool of red thread, with a metal thimble at its foot.
• Zigzag borders, a running stitch along the receiver and hearts down both sides of the grip.

Finish

• Custom Paint Job Extended. The whole gun is dressed in cloth, scope, rail, receiver and magazine included.
• Matte Aida cloth with its woven grid, and slightly glossier thread with raised stitches.
• Full wear range (0.00 - 1.00). The cloth wears before the thread, so the stitches are the last thing to go.

Made for the Fairy Tales Call to Arms.