An elbow's length of thread
My happy place for all things stitch and textile. You can also find me in more musing mode, at "Of Gardens, Grandmothers and Gleanings"
Wednesday, 15 June 2022
Flowers and bluebird
Saturday, 14 May 2022
Uzbek embroidery
So what did I see of embroidery in Uzbekistan? A tremendous amount, far far more than one would ever see in the UK. We were treated to both historic embroideries and visited a number of places where embroidery is carried out as a part of the economy; textiles being created either for personal and domestic use, or to be sold to locals and tourists. On two occasions we were also given a piece of fabric to stitch and some teaching by the embroiderers there. The wealth of amazing embroidered items, from the older pieces in the museums to newly embroidered items for sale was breathtaking.
The Applied Art Museum in Tashkent was our introduction to embroidery, along with many other beautiful arts and crafts. Here and in Samarkand we saw household textiles, bed and cradle covers, prayer mats, suzanis to hang on the walls, blouses, jackets, babies clothes. Many of these might be a part of a bride's dowry, or created to beautify the home, be that a static house or, in the past, a yurt belonging to nomadic folk, where textiles provided both decoration and warmth. Traditional motifs included flowers and birds, pomegranates, peppers, stars and rosettes. The stitches that we saw used were predominately chain stitch, including that done as tambour work, and Bokhara couching. It all sounds very simple, almost naïve, but the variety we saw, the colours, patterns and designs were absolutely stunning. The pictures below will give you some idea of our delight.
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Bokhara couching - row upon row of thread laid and couched, sometimes outlined in chain stitch |
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detail of the image below, a suzani, Bokhara couching and chain stitch |
Suzanis are a very traditional part of the brides dowry. They are often made in several pieces, the fabrics loosely tacked together to allow the design to be drawn. Then they are taken apart and individual family members stitch their piece before all the bits are reassembled. A lovely way for a family to stitch their love and hopes for the bride into a gift which will serve to remind her of their affection for years to come.
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several suzanis on display with our lovely guide Mashkhura explaining their creation |
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a more modern embroidery, but still using traditional motifs |
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exquisite goldwork on velvet |
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detail of above - you can see some of the sequins sparkling in the light |
Having feasted our eyes on this loveliness we later visited several embroidery workshops and a wonderful collection of embroidered items in a private house.
In Gijduvan we were shown how the threads were dyed with natural pigments
We also visited the Bokhara workshop of Rakhmon Toshev. This amazing space had an astounding selection of beautiful embroideries on the walls, and great piles on trestles around the room, from which a selection were displayed to us, with explanations about the designs, and the skill and time involved in their stitching.
Some were embroidered on a plain background
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above and below, some of the beautiful collection of historic textiles and our host telling us about them |
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a wealth of embroidery, layer upon layer, laid out before us |
The designs were drawn freehand onto the fabric with a biro, in this case to order - I asked him for a bird
The stitching was done using much longer pieces of thread than we are used to - no "elbow's length" restrictions here, just however much thread comes out of the pile. And by pile I mean exactly that. The colourful tangle below was the one from which our master embroiderer pulled out whatever thread he considered appropriate for the design we had chosen. In the case of the good ladies in Gijduvan, if the thread was too long, or wouldn't come out clean from the tangle she simply snapped off enough for her purpose.
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it's a lovely red, but boy it was springy and twisty and unwilling to comply with my intentions |
Sunday, 8 May 2022
Uzbek silk
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Ikat fabrics in Tashkent Applied Art Museum |
I have been pondering a great deal on how to give you a taste of my trip to Uzbekistan without overloading you with detail and having ridiculously long posts, I saw so much it was, at times, overwhelming and we were so well conducted round the country by our Stitchtopia tour leaders, Karin and Bean and our delightful local guide Mashkhura, that I managed to take over 2000 photos. I have whittled them down a bit now, but still, you could only manage a fraction of what is left before your eyes glazed over!
I think I will start with silk, since, along with cotton, this is one of the industries Uzbekistan is known for. It is such a labour intensive material to produce, and it was incredibly absorbing seeing that production from cocoon to finished product. In Margilan, which is in the Fergana Valley we went to the Yodgorlik Silk Factory and the Margilan Crafts Development Centre. First we saw the process of winding off the silk from the cocoons, which are steeped in very hot water to soften the sticky substance which binds them together and allow the threads to unspool. Ducking into a long dark steamy room we found this lady and her companion sitting by a deep cauldron. Swooshing the hot water round with a stick, she was stirring and lifting the cocoons and gently pulling them apart as she began the process of separating the individual threads
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boiling the cocoons and separating the threads |
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what remains from the cocoons after winding |
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winding groups of threads off for processing - they were such lovely smiley ladies |
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marking up the bundles of warp thread with the pattern |
Once marked and tied the bundles of warp thread are steeped in a great metal vat of dye. This process might be repeated more than once, depending on the complexity and number of colours in the pattern. If you look closely at the image below you can see the next set of marks, ready for a second tying process before the yellow is overdyed.
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once the thread is dyed you can begin to see the pattern emerge |
Then the silk is warped up - you can see that process in the video I link to further down. It is woven, either on hand looms like these below, with foot pedals to operate the heddles and a mechanism for throwing the shuttle back and forth; swish click, swish click, swish click, swish click, the warp threads weighted at the end with great metal weight to hold them taut.
Alternatively there are these wonderful looking mechanised looms. The sound as one entered this room was pretty overwhelming, and it made me wonder what the vast factories full of looms during the industrial revolution must have sounded like.
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the noise in this room was simply astonishing |
All of this weaving produces the Ikat, or Abr-Bandi (cloud tying) fabric that you can find being sold across the country in a veritable rainbow of colours. Admittedly many of them are more busy and colourful than we are used to in Europe, but I found them magical, and was unable to resist purchasing a couple of lengths which I am, at the moment, simply gazing at and stroking periodically!
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Pile upon tempting pile of fabrics |
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The interior of the Bazaar at Urgut - it seemed to go on for miles! |
There is a wonderful in depth video of this process here if you would like to know more. The silk winding ladies at the beginning are the ones in the pictures above. As with all of the folk we met there, they were delightfully friendly, eager to share their skill and incredibly (and justifiably) proud of what they were producing.
Of course is it not just fabric that is made with the silk. In Bukhara we also saw carpets being made on upright looms, by hand, with dazzling skill, speed and dexterity.
The salesroom was awash with carpets of all sizes, colours and levels of refinement and we were shown examples of them all. There were relatively "rough" woolen carpets, then came cotton, with a finer knot count, silk knotted onto a cotton warp was next, but the finest carpets of all, silk knotted onto a silk warp were so fluid and delicate they could be folded up into a small bundle for sending out.
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a sea of exquisite carpets |
As a grand finale we were shown the carpet below which was knotted by two ladies, one each side of the loom, so that, when cut off and finished, it became a double sided carpet, with different pattern and colour on either side
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this silk one had a drape like fabric |
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and was revealed to be a magic double sided carpet |
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Such delicate and detailed designs |
Monday, 4 April 2022
taking shape
Sunday, 27 March 2022
Butterfly and glue stitch
Thank you Jude for your stitching wisdom and inspiration. Now to reinstate those wing edges and the rest of the design can proceed .......
Thursday, 17 March 2022
sussex'ing
Friday, 4 February 2022
Bargello update
I finished my little bit of canvaswork in mid January. I am very happy with the way it has turned out, the grading of colour from centre to outside has given the right level of "glow" in the middle. The leaves in the centre are easy to distinguish while the darker edges bring out the bright flowers. We won't comment on the slight difference in my working of the bottom flower!
Christine asked me why I chose to use stranded cotton rather than the more traditional wool. In part it was because this was how Rachel was working her experimental fish. Her reason was to allow her to mix colours in the needle, to great effect I must say, but I hadn't really thought about that element until it came to the background. Here the six strands gave me the flexibility to work three shades in a graduated way which has created a smooth transition from one colour to the other. This is not quite the way Bargello is traditionally worked; colour transitions are more marked as with the flowers and leaves here, but that wouldn't have given the right effect in the background. The other effect of stranded cotton as opposed to wool is the lovely sheen that comes where the light, hitting the thread as it lies in differing directions, bounces back and brings changes in value to the colours. I'm really enjoying that.
Now, of course, that horrid question people tend to ask - "but what's it for?" Well it's only about 5 inches square, so something small, another box perhaps. But really, it has been for the pleasure of stitching and experimenting. And that is enough for me