Dedicated Apple fan creates needlework Mac masterpieces

By

Glenda Adams
And you thought your old Macs loaded slowly!
Photo: Glenda Adams

So you’ve got your perfect Apple geek room: Steve Jobs biographies on the bookshelves, iMac Pro on your desk, and maybe a couple of rare vintage Macs locked in a display cabinet.

Looking for something for the wall? Look no further than the work of Glenda Adams. A long-time Apple fan, she’s been busy creating miniature needlework masterpieces modeled after classic Apple interfaces. And, man, are they awesome!

Where needlepoint meets the Macintosh

Glenda Adams
Another stunning Mac re-creation.
Photo: Glenda Adams

During the day, Glenda Adams is an iOS developer for Fetch Rewards, a company in Madison, WI, which makes a grocery rewards app. However, it’s in the evenings when her Apple geekery is on full display.

An Apple fan dating back to the Apple II days, for the past several years Adams has found a unique way to combine her love of Mac with her cross-stitch hobby. The result are miniature needlework creations which pay tribute to the work of great Apple interface designers, such as Mac icon maestro Susan Kare.

“I’d been stitching on and off for many years, but mostly just the usual pictures of rabbits or little sayings — kind of classic needlepoint,” Adams tells Cult of Mac. “A few years ago I suddenly thought, ‘these stitches are just pixels, like the games I’ve worked on.’ After that lightbulb went on, I thought it’d be interesting to see if I could do pixel accurate recreations of old computer screens.”

Glenda Adams
Glenda’s latest gorgeous creation.
Photo: Glenda Adams

She settled on screens from old Mac and Apple II programs due to the smaller color palettes they required to faithfully recreate them. Her latest is a recreation of the classic Mac Control Panel, stitched into a 14×8 inch masterpiece.

Not for sale… just yet, at least

Glenda Adams
The perfect accompaniment to any fan’s office.
Photo: Glenda Adams

“I actually set up a classic Mac emulator on my iMac 5K, running the original Mac OS on a simulated 512K Mac,” she says. “I found the original system disk images, and was able to get it all started up so I could use the original software. After getting things on the Mac screen, I took a screenshot and moved it into Photoshop.”

“I [then] cropped out just the Control Panel window, and ended up with an exact one to one pixel map of the window,” she continues/ “From there, I printed out about a dozen pages of blown up-gridded sections of the pattern. That’s what I use as a guide to stitch.”

Unfortunately, fans shouldn’t hold their breath expecting to buy her finished creation. Or, at least, not quite yet.

“I don’t have plans to sell the bigger creations, they take so long it’d be hard to put a price on them,” she says. “But I’ve thought about doing some smaller pieces or setting up an Etsy shop for commissions. I enjoy doing it and people really responded well to the finished projects, so it’s tempting.”

Hurry up and take our money, please!

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.