To celebrate, we are going to talk about Colombian embroidery.
In Colombia, weaving/knitting is king (cotton, wool, Gynerium sagittatum, Furcraea, banana fiber, etc.) but embroidery is also appreciated.
Cartago Openwork
Let’s start with the most locally famous, Cartago (Valle del Cauca) openwork.
Penelope, the monument to the embroiderer, Cartago, Valle del Cauca, Colombia.
It is a type of drawnthread whitework. It is done on linen or cotton, but always evenweave. The threads of the ground fabric are drawn (cut) out and then new threads (cotton) are needlewoven in to create beautiful geometric designs on the bias.
Cartago openwork in progress.
The embroidery is used to decorate sheets, tablecloths, curtains, and the famous openwork guayaberas (Panama shirts.)
Openwork Guayabera
Fonquetá Crewelwork
In the highlands of the Cundinamarca state, sheep are raised, and with their wool, fabric is woven and embroidered.
Crewelwork from the Fonquetá artisanal workshop (@tallerartesanalfonqueta)
Nariño Appliqué
In the city of Pasto, Nariño, they weave woolen blankets which they then embroider with appliqué using cotton fabric and threads.
When I was in Prague, Czech Republic, last year (2019), I was able to admire Ms. María Mercedes de Duque’s beautiful work. She made the Infant a dress embroidered with the Colombian national symbols.
The Infant of Prague’s dress.The flag, the shield, and a map in gold with an emerald.Pre-columbian gold artifacts, orchids and butterflies. Can’t forget the coffee.The artist, Ms. María Mercedes de Duque.
Para celebrar, vamos a hablar de algunos de los bordados colombianos.
En Colombia manda el tejido (algodón, lana, caña flecha, fique, calceta de plátano, etc.) pero el bordado también es apreciado.
Calado de Cartago
Comenzamos con el bordado más famoso, el calado de Cartago (Valle del Cauca.)
Penélope, monumento a la bordadora, Cartago, Valle del Cauca, Colombia.
Es una clase de bordado en blanco. Se hace sobre lino o algodón, pero tejido en ligamento tafetán. Se sacan los hilos y luego se vuelven a coser formando diseños geométricos muy lindos al sesgo o biés.
Calados de Cartago en progreso.
Los bordados se usan para decorar sábanas, manteles, cortinas, y las famosas guayaberas caladas
Guayabera calada
Bordado en lana de Fonquetá
En el altiplano cundiboyasense, se produce lana de oveja, y esto llevó al bordado de lana sobre lana.
En Fonquetá, Cundinamarca, se bordan las mantas de lana con hilos de lana.
Bordado en lana del taller artesanal de Fonquetá (@tallerartesanalfonqueta)
Gobelinos de Pasto, Nariño.
En la ciudad de Pasto, Nariño, se hace un bordado sobre paños de lana usando aplicados de tela de algodón, con detalles en hilos de algodón.
Y cuando estuve en Praga, República Checa, pude admirar la labor de doña María Mercedes de Duque, que le hizo un vestido al divino niño de Praga con los símbolos patrios.
Vestido del niño de Praga.La bandera, el escudo y un mapa en oro con una esmeralda.Artefactos pre-colombinos en oro, orquídeas y mariposas.Y el café que no puede faltar.La artista, doña María Mercedes de Duque.
Enjoyed it a lot and learned to do blackwork and whitework and stumpwork. I also bought a couple kits to learn goldwork and broderie anglaise (more whitework.)
Whitework pulled thread stumpwork brooch. Design by Sarah Rickards.Blackwork initial (I added the beads.) Design by Annalee LevinGoldwork cherries. Design by Annalee LevinBroderie anglaise thimble. Design by Zinaida Kazban
I was supposed to go again this year (2020.) They were planning to have the USA summer school every two years, but COVID-19 put a damper on that.
So I decided to take one of their online self-paced classes this summer. I signed up for the Introduction to Jacobean Crewelwork class.
Online self-paced embroidery class
The class was great! I learned the basics of crewel. It’s very interesting working with wool threads. They tend to break more easily than cotton after a few stitches.
My own effort, the crewel pomegranate.
One of the ways to keep the wool threads from breaking, is to keep the stitch on the surface as much as possible. This is done with stitches like the raised stem stitch. You first create a supporting grid of horizontal stitches. The stem stitches will then go vertically under the supporting horizontal stitches, NOT through the fabric.
Raised stem stitch.
Other stitches that help cover large areas with minimal trips through the ground cloth are the trellis stitch (inside the pomegranate) and the woven wheel in the center of the petals to the lower right side.
It was a great class, I enjoyed it very much. Thanks to Deborah Wilding for teaching it!
Since my beloved is a big fan of Iceland and narwhals, I decided to combine the two and make a cushion cover for his favorite cushion with an embroidered pattern featuring Icelandic embroidery and narwhals.
Icelandic narwhal embroidered cushion cover
The pattern comes from the book Traditional Icelandic Embroidery by Elsa E. Gudjónsson. However, I did not use wool, rather, I shopped my stash and used 25-count linen and stranded cotton thread.
Traditional Icelandic Embroidery by Elsa E. Gudjónsson
The pattern had peacocks, which were replaced with narwhals (besides, how Icelandic are peacocks?)
Icelandic peacocks?
I used the long arm cross stitch or gamli krosssaumurinn. I followed the tutorial in the Piecework Magazine article by Justin Allan-Spencer (February 2020.)
Long-armed cross stitch instructions by Justin Allan-Spencer in Piecework Magazine article.
Once the embroidery was finished, I used an old shirt and a left over piece from a bed cover to make the rest of the cushion cover. I even made piping! I originally wanted to put an invisible zipper but realized that it was too small for the cushion, so I ripped it out and put in buttons instead.
Homemade pipping or rather “artisanal” piping.Well, at least now I know how to put in an invisible zipper.The buttons for closing the cushion cover.
I learned a lot, specially the sewing skills required to make the cushion cover.
Las colchas bordadas de Nuevo México en los Estados Unidos se hacen sobre tela de sabanilla (lana tejida de las ovejas churro, originalmente traídas de España) y se bordan con hilos de la misma lana, teñidos con tintes naturales de la zona.
El bordado islandés tradicional se hace con hilos de lana sobre tela de lana.
Bordado islandés del siglo XIII en la colección del museo de Victoria & Albert
El bordado medieval europeo se hacía con lana o lino. El tapiz de Bayeux fue bordado con hilos de lana (en algunas secciones con hilos de lino) sobre tela de lino.
Los bordados metálicos se hacían con hilos de oro y plata, pero los que se hacen hoy en día son hechos con hilos que son solamente dorados con una cantidad mínima de oro.
Los hilos, cuencas, canutillos, mostacillas, etc de oro se pegan a la tela (algodón, lino, seda) con hilos (algodón, poliéster.)
En el Or Nué y en el sombrado italiano se hacen efectos de sombra y diseños con el hilo para pegar.
Pero vamos a empezar por lo básico: la diferencia entre tejer y bordar.
Tejer viene primero, y empieza con hilos que al combinarse se vuelven una tela.
Telar antiguo
Hay tejido en telar, con agujas, con ganchos, con las manos, etc.
Para bordar hay que empezar con la tela ya hecha. Los hilos se añaden con agujas y se forman nuevos diseños sobre la tela o en el caso del calado, a través de la tela.
Bordado de punto de cruz sobre tela de lino.
Hay dos categorías mayores:
El de hilos contados y los sin-contar.
Bordados sobre hilos contados
Se hacen sobre telas de tejido plano (ligamento tafetán) generalmente lino o algodón (o alguna mezcla tejida planamente.)
De esta manera los hilos en cualquier dirección se pueden contar. Estas telas se venden por su cuenta de hilos por pulgada:
Por ejemplo, si la tela es de 32 hilos (32 thread count) esto significa que en una pulgada de la tela se pueden contar 32 hilos en dirección vertical. Si contando en dirección horizontal, la cuenta será la misma.
Pulgadas
Centímetros
10
4
14
6
18
7
25
10
32
13
40
16
Equivalente de cuenta de hilos en pulgadas y centímetros.
Al poderse contar los hilos, los diseños se prestan para hacer diagramas y se vuelven repetibles.
Diagrama de diseño de punto de cruz.
Unos de los más populares estilos de hilos contados es el punto de cruz. El punto de cruz es sencillo, sólo hay que hacer una cruz cruzando un o más hilos verticales.
Muy popular también es el bordado en cañamazo (needlepoint.) La tela de cañamazo tiene por tamaño 10 hilos por pulgada (también se encuentran de 12, 14, etc.) Se puede bordar con muchos tipos de puntadas, con hilos gruesos y lana.
Cañamazo con diseños de Bargello por Sarah Barker.
Las labores en negro (blackwork) se pueden hacer en cualquier color, pero tradicionalmente se hacen con hilos negros.
Los calados se hacen cuando se sacan los hilos de la tela y luego se retejen con otros formando nuevos diseños.
Randas o vainicas. Diseño por Linda Driskell
Calado en estilo Hardanger. Diseño por Linda Driskell.Calado apretado. Diseño por Linda Driskell.
Los calados también se pueden hacer sin cortar los hilos si se usa una tela de baja cuenta de hilos (25 hilos por pulgada o menos) el calado se hace al apretar el hilo al pasarlo por la tela abriendo huecos (pulled work.)
Bordados sobre hilos sin cuenta
El bordado más conocido es el superficial, donde las puntadas van sobre la tela.
Muestrario con puntadas en tela sin cuenta.
Entre estas están los bordados dimensionales como el brasileño.
Apparently there is a type of literature called knit lit. It is simply books where the action takes place around knitting and usually includes details of a knitting project. Some authors even publish a project pattern along with their books.
Well, I have found some of these that take place around embroidery.
Under the Cozy Mystery category is Monica Ferris and her Crewel Worldseries. The series has 19 books and counting. It tells the adventures of Betsy Devonshire who owns a needlework store in Excelsior, Minnesota. Betsy is usually solving a murder in between stitching and tending to customers.
Each book has a stitching pattern, usually of a project discussed in the story. The pattern can also be accessed on the author’s Web site.
What I found very interesting is that the author talks about details of the stitching world. In one of the volumes, Crewel Yule, the protagonist attends the Nashville Needlework Market which is a trade fair where needlework designers (mainly cross stitch) and needlework store owners meet. This year, I followed the market on Instagram and learned a lot about designers.
Because if you are an immortal vampire, you have all the time to knit.
This is another Cozy Mystery, but frankly it should have its own sub-sub category: supernatural cozy mystery.
The story revolves around Lucy Swift who owns a knitting shop in Oxford, England. And yes, there are knitting vampires, and witches, and murder mysteries. There are nine volumes and counting.
I think I like it better than a Discovery of Witches (which is now a series being shown in the US on AMC.) Both take place in Oxford, the British University town and both deal with witches and vampires. But Lucy and her vampires and witches are more fun.
Both of these series are available as audiobooks. I listen to them as I stitch using the Hoopla and cloudLibrary apps, which are free through my local library.
Bordé este dedal en bordado inglés. Diseño por Zinaida Kazban.
Estoy re-aprendiendo a bordar.
En mi niñez, aprendí a bordar el cañamazo en el colegio de monjas. Manualidades era mi materia menos preferida. Lo mío era la informática y las matemáticas.
Para mí en ese entonces bordar y otras manualidades eran parte de ese mundo represivo donde las mujeres no podían hacer los mismos trabajos que los hombres. Entonces me aferré a los sistemas, como expresión feminista y rebelión contra la patriarcado.
Pero ahora entiendo que la represión estaba en la sociedad, no en las manualidades.
Con las manualidades, nuestras abuelas crearon arte, desarrollaron maestría y construyeron una identidad cultural.
Ahora en mi madurez, quiero reconectar con el arte de mis abuelas.
I embroidered this thimble in broderie anglaise. Design by Zinaida Kazban
Why Embroidery?
A couple of years ago, my cousin mentioned to me that she was re-learning to knit.
The idea of taking up a crafting hobby sounded good to me, I was looking to unplug from my phone and my computer, and keep my hands busy, so I decided to give embroidery another try.
Having attended a school run by nuns in Colombia during my childhood, we had a manual arts class (along with algebra, history, geography and computer science) where we had to learn to embroider.
When I was a child, I hated embroidery. I loved computer coding, it was what I wanted to do. But now, 30 years later after a career in IT, I was going back to embroidery to get a break from technology.
Apparently I am not the only one. Doing a search on crafting, knitting, or embroidery, yields many posts. People are showing off their projects on Instagram and Pinterest. They are teaching others how to knit, crochet, weave, and of course, to embroider.
I rejected the fiber arts when I was a child because I wanted to dedicate myself to technology, which promised progress and riches. But now that I am older, I am reconnecting with the crafts of my youth, which promise calm and a connection to the past.
In the olden days, the fiber arts were one of the few spaces where women could express themselves, and that was the reason I rejected them when I was young; I saw embroidery as repressive.
But now I can see that the fiber arts are not repressive. The times when women were ONLY allowed to sew, embroider, weave, knit, and spin were repressive. Those women created beautiful art, developed mastery, and built a sense of identity.
Despite having today more career opportunities than my grandmothers did in their days, I am revisiting their art to enjoy what they enjoyed and connect with them.
