History of Smocking It was purposely created to allow movement and was made of natural material such as wool,cotton or linen. The poorer classes wore blue, the colour being directly linked to poor peasants. Now the young Royals have outfitted their lovely children in gorgeous smocked outfits and the popularity of smocked garments are once again in the limelight. Smocking is an embroidery technique which uses pleats and smocking stitches to embellish dresses and garments. But it’s purpose was not always applied to just children’ s clothes or a variety of...
Handicrafts are the mixture of significance and artistic feeling of its people who assess the level of culture and expressions of national identity. People serve them with cotton, thread, silk, wool, metals, wood and stone and use their talent to shape these things in beautiful designs so in this way, actually they play very important function for the society. (Quddus, 1992) Handicrafts are also most important symbol in terms of economic development. Economically home based work has helped men and women both for the long time period. Now a days...
Bunad embroidery Buskerud, Norway Scandinavia is very rich in folk costumes, although for the most part they fall into a definite ‘type’, this one is an exception. Norway has some very beautiful folk costumes, and they are very proud of them. I will elaborate somewhat on the costume of the upper Hallingdal, especially the region of Gol. In Norway, traditional regional costumes which are officially recognized by the appropriate government agency are referred to by the term ‘Bunad’. If a local form of dress is not so recognized, or if it...
The Norwegian – Traditional folk The colourful Norwegian folk dress has gained in popularity in recent years. We take a look at the history and the detail of the designs. A bunad is a traditional folk costume that you find all over Norway. Although much more popular with women, men’s bunads are also available. The best time to see the outfit is on Norway’s national day, when the streets are full of bunad-wearing Norwegians of all generations! You may also people wearing one at weddings and other celebrations. A modern...
“The embroidery features patterns that combine various flowers including lotus and other beautiful elements,” he said. “Both our embroidering skills and lives are getting better and better,” he said. The center, which was launched in 2016, has developed more than 1,300 embroidery products including earphones and notebooks. It received a total of 1,750 orders of embroidery products in 2018, which were worth more than a million yuan (145,400 U.S. dollars). Kader Rahman, a 46-year-old embroiderer in the city of Hami in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is helping lift...
The traditional handicraft has stretched back through the generations but is now in danger of disappearing due to the boom in the market economy and the invasion of imported products in local markets across tourism areas. LÀO CAI — With a sewing needle, a reel of thread and a piece of cloth on her person at all times, Lò Tả Mảy, 29, from Tả Phìn Village in the northern province of Lào Cai has all she needs to stitch her intricate embroidery, any time and any place. Mảy is one...
The event named “The eye of the needle”, was hosted by the West Bengal Crafts Council last year, showcasing the innate artistry practiced all over the Bengali-speaking region. The unstated message was “crafted by women, strategised for economic freedom”. Traditional Bengali embroidery is making a difference in many village women’s lives. What was once a simple pastime, is increasingly done for financial rewards. It is empowering the artisans. Over his lifetime, octogenarian Ghazi Dewan (name changed) has had passports of four different countries: British India, India (post 1947), Pakistan...
LÀO CAI — With a sewing needle, a reel of thread and a piece of cloth on her person at all times, Lò Tả Mảy, 29, from Tả Phìn Village in the northern province of Lào Cai has all she needs to stitch her intricate embroidery, any time and any place. May is one of just a few ethnic Dao women in Tả Phìn – one of the most attractive tourism spots in Lào Cai – who are trying to preserve their embroidery craft. LÀO CAI — With a sewing...
Traditional embroidery a way out of poverty for women in traditional Palestinian society. Darawi, a soft-spoken Muslim woman wearing a traditional grey headscarf, doesn’t look like a pioneer. But Darawi is a divorced self-employed Palestinian seamstress from the town of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem, who is responsible for teaching other seamstresses, and a symbol of how roles are changing for Palestinian women. Darawi’s intricate work uses bright colors and designs and is sewn onto purses, shawls, vests, and wallets. She says she works several hours each day while taking care...
Women’s Embroidery In Mexico “For me, it is part of our heritage,” says Dolores Rodríguez, who has been embroidering since she was a child. “Because of this, I’ve been able to raise my children and send them to school. Embroidery has greatly helped me.” In many indigenous communities in Puebla, traditional embroidery is a vital source of income for local families. The municipality of Pahuatlán faces very high levels of marginalization, with many residents facing a daily battle against malnutrition and poverty. Less than four hours’ drive from Mexico City, the indigenous communities...
Qiang Embroidery Aid Project In July 2008, two months after the quake, Yan launched the Qiang Embroidery Aid Project and threw herself into making the charity program a success. Yan selected Longxi Township in Wenchuan as the first place to conduct her program. It was a struggle at first. She and her team held an event for 400 women to tell them about the program. But although there were local government officials with them, the women did not at first believe that the team would actually pay for their embroidery...
Afghanistan embroidery In general the production of embroidery is carried out by girls and women at home. By the end of the twentieth century there also was a significant number of men carrying out embroidery, but this was usually machine embroidery produced in tailor’s workshops. Afghanistan is surrounded by many different ethnic groups and cultures and it is not surprising therefore that the materials, designs and colours used by the Afghan people for their embroidery reflect the central and important location of their country in Asia. Almost each ethic group...
Traditionally, carrying out embroidery work for women has been very much linked with their femininity determined by the local maxim of “Har chamuto har hunar” which means “Every finger bearing a different skill”. Highly skilled artisans are called “Hunarmand Hoost” which means “Skilled hands”. The understanding of what it means to be a woman in Chitral then draws on the skills in various household activities including crafts. Such aspiration for skills among women, however, goes beyond the simple economic needs of individuals and families, and bears on social relations at...
Cultures as diverse as Latvia, Mexico and Hungary are a few of the many places on earth where hand embroidery is still a thriving craft. Pictured above is an example of embroidery from France. Historians have found embroidery that dates all the way back to the 5th Century BC in China. If the words “Hand Embroidery” make you think of a gift from Granny in days gone by, here’s some great and colorful news. Hand embroidery – the craft of decorating fabric using needles with thread or yarn – is a...
Dong ethnic woman helping to reduce poverty with traditional embroidery The 33-year-old woman learnt such embroidery techniques from her mother, a well-know expert in the local community. She started practicing stitch-work from a very young age. After graduating from college in 2008, Lu decided to pick up the skill again. She said the traditional Dong embroidery techniques are of special significance to the Dong culture, and she has a responsibility to carry it on as a Dong woman. More importantly, as the oldest daughter of her family, Lu has an...
The Hmong Cultural Center and the Hmong Archives would like to thank the following people who contributed their time to support this project. Xai S. Lor is the curator of the Hmong Embroidery project. He wrote narratives for the selected pieces to be featured on the Hmong Embroidery website. He also took photographs and worked on the development of the website. Kou Xiong also worked on the website. Shoua V. Xiong of Hmong ABC Bookstore served as a consultant, and answered questions and clarified things that were unclear. Proofreading was...
Toda Embroidery Ooty is a tourist place situated in Nilgiris district of Tamilnadu, India. It is the district capital of the Nilgiris, also known as The Blue Mountains. Nilgiris is India’s first biosphere. It has been declared as one of the 14 hotspots of the world because of its unique bio-diversity. With its district headquarters as Ooty, almost the entire district is contained within this mountain range. The Toda women do an aesthetically great and intricate form of embroidery on matted fabric and this form of art holds a cultural...
Traditional Croatian culture The Pannonian cultural zone has been characterised by the growing of grain, flax and hemp, and breeding larger domestic animals (horses, cattle). The people lived in single-storey houses made of wood or mud and wattle (in the west), or of compacted clay or unfired bricks (in the east), with straw roofs. Along the River Kupa and River Sava, two-storey houses were prevalent, the successors to pile-dwellings. Furniture was tall. Home crafts which were particularly developed included weaving on a horizontal loom and pottery using a foot-turned wheel....
Women’s traditional clothing in Bulgaria and European fashion “Covering the hair with a headscarf was preserved most of all as a ritual function in some traditions – “lazaruvane”, wedding rituals,” Ellie Gutseva explains. “In towns hats were in and there was a period when they were very popular, taking all sorts of flamboyant and fantastic shapes and sizes. But by the 1920s and 1930s things had definitely changed radically.” “Until the time of the liberation, Bulgarian women wore the traditional costume mostly in villages. It consisted of chemise and outer skirt open...
Art of the Sinai Preserving Cultural Tradition FanSina is located in St. Catherine’s, a small village about a six-hour drive from Cairo, and sits at the foot of the traditional location of Mt Sinai. St. Catharine’s monastery, which was built by the Roman Emperor Justinian in the mid-sixth century, is a frequent destination of pilgrims. In 1996 the European Union funded a program to establish the natural protectorate of St. Catherine and several others in this region. One of the projects was the Craft and Income Generation Project of the...
At the forefront is a local embroidery workers’ cooperative led by Zhang Juyue, a 20-something member of the ethnic minority with a penchant for reaching out to the wider market. Her skill in forming partnerships is bringing Qiang handcrafted embroidery wider renown and possibly greater wealth to combat poverty in the community. Today, however, they are working to promote their traditional embroidery as a valuable alternative income stream. A stitch in time: can ancient skill of embroidery help alleviate poverty in a remote area of China? Workers cooperative helps the...
You want to add a little embroidered motif to a T-shirt? You have to stitch on knit! Baby goods – like onesies and receiving blankets – are often knit, so if you want to embellish them with a personal touch, you’ll want to know how to stitch on knit. If you’re interested in embellishing knit fabrics with little bits of embroidery (or big bits!), then read on! I’ll share with you my recent adventures in embroidering ducks on baby goods, throwing in a few tips and observations along the way....
Embroidery – Quat Dong Village The history of Quat Dong embroidery dates back to the 15th century, when a Vietnamese ambassador in China returned home and passed ancient embroidery techniques to Vietnamese villagers. Over the centuries, embroidery went from being used on ceremonial and royal clothes to adorning a wide range of products. Now you can find beautifully emrboidered tablecloths, bedspreads, sheets, and pillow cases in Quat Dong Village Do Papermaking – Suoi Co Village Traditional Vietnamese paper, Do, is made from the bark of Rhamnoneuron balansae shrub native to Vietnam. It’s...
Hand Embroidery in Viet Nam Traditional hand embroidery can be made on any type of fabric: cotton, silk… After having the pattern, the artist has to transfer it to the fabric. This step is done entirely by hand, using a scanned paper needle pattern in cmbination with pastels and kerosene. Also, the pattern is adapted to the fabric with only the stroke but not the color as cross embroidery. With hand embroidery, the artisan has the chance to show their creativity with many different color codes of the thread, including...
In a supplement to its Asian Development Outlook (ADO) 2018 report released last April, ADB forecasts 2018 growth for Asia and the Pacific at 6.0% for 2018 and 5.9% for 2019, in line with its previous projections. Excluding Asia’s newly industrialized economies, growth is forecast at 6.5% in 2018 and 6.4% in 2019, also unchanged from April. Growth in Asia and the Pacific’s developing economies for 2018 and 2019 will remain solid as growth continues apace across the region, despite rising tensions between the United States and...
Among the villages, Dong Cuu established itself as a trustworthy address for making and restoring royal robes for Kings, Queens and members of royal family. Now the village’s best buy products include costumes for hau dong (mediumship) ritual. The traditional embroidery craft in Dong Cuu village, Dung Tien commune, Thuong Tien district in Hanoi, was recently honoured as a national intangible cultural heritage. For hundreds of years, embroiderers in the village have established their fame for making royal robes and costumes for festivals and worshipping rituals. It is said that...
Thanh Ha in embroideryviet was one of the first people to see profit in his local craft Looking out across his green rice fields, Mr Minh in Embroideryviet company can take pride in hedging his bets when he joined the global marketplace more than a decade ago and began to make money. When Vietnam began a tentative engagement with the world economy in the mid-1990s, Thanh Ha in embroideryviet was one of the first people to see profit in his local craft, embroidery, and he joined with other villagers in...
For the majority, Embroidery is most likely to be firmly affiliated with the ‘mend, make and do’ practice of our elders, along with the not very attractive interior decorative features we were surrounding by in our youth. However, it appears that it is this very sense of awakened nostalgia that has made the trend so widely appealing, as Embroidering in all its old fashioned glory has brought back a welcomed sentiment of authenticity and enrichment. In a world where the closest us mere mortals get to the magic of Haute...
Embroidery Embroidery is one of Vietnam’s most important crafts. It came to Vietnam from China but with time developed its own style and tradition. In the beginning the Vietnamese used embroidery to add quotations from devotional works to pagoda curtains and to embellish ceremonial clothes. By the 17th century the art was concentrated in the Hue area. Motifs and symbols were sewn on to costumes for the emperor and his royal family with themes bases on mythology and scenes from nature. If you want to bring a meaningful and beautiful...
NHA XA SILK VILLAGE – HA NAM PROVINCE Nha Xa Silk Village is located in Moc Nam Commune, Duy Tien District, Ha Nam Province, on the left bank of the Red River, which borders Hung Yen Province. The silk products of Nha Xa Village are also very popular. If silk Van Phuc Ha Noi top, the product of Nha Xa silk village is equally famous with quality and design very well. Nha Xa Silk Village is well known for silk weaving and its silk is ranked second only after Van...
