Hardanger is famous for two things. It´s fjord and it´s embroidery. The fjord is very scenic, and is frequently visited by large cruise-ships. The embroidery has gotten it´s international name for their own version of white-work-embroidery, used in their bunads. It´s also used in interior textiles, such as table-cloths.
This weekend I am once again at the textile-culture workshop, and this time we started of at Hardanger Museum in Utne. There was a lot of interesting thing to see there, but today´s post is all about the Hardanger embroidery.
We saw some awesome examples of fine craftmanship. Like the apron in the second photo, especially made for the 1900 world Expo in Paris.
Or the tablecloth above. The linen it is sewn on is so finely woven with thin threads, and this type of embroidery is all about counting threads, to make sure the pattern will turn out correct. The details here are so fine and whoever sew this must have had sharper eyesight than me, that´s for sure.
To be perfectly honest with you, I´ve had a ambvivalent relationship with this craft since i worked long and hard on a small tablecloth in the 8th grade. That was 30 years ago and it´s still not finished….
So guess what our little activity was time time: Hardanger embroidery!
There are two main parts of the embroidery. The basic stich, which binds the backing fabric. Usually that is 5 stitches lying above each other in a row, each over 4 threads. Then a vertigal row, and a new horizontal… As above..
Once I did the outer ring, framing my little piece, it was time to cut out all the threads that were bound by the stitches made. When done, it looked like this.
Ok. Time for the second stitch: an 8-stitch, which holds together the remaining threads.
At the end of the lesson, I´m still not finished, but my broken realtionship with Hardanger-embroidery of 30 years is now healed. I mastered it! 🙂
