Traditional Norwegian embroidery

[KitSileya]

I am in 7th heaven because I finished a 2 1/2 year embroidery project tonight. It is the headlinen that goes with my Norwegian bunad (national costume.) Norway has 263 different bunads (and a ton of costumes that are not considered bunad, because they lack the historic basis that bunads must have,) but very few have headlinens (several have girl's 'bonnets') and none that I know of have the elaborate embroidery of my region.

And here it is:

[IMG][/IMG]

Here is a picture of it on a model:

[IMG][/IMG]
I need to wash it a couple of times, and iron it, before I can wear it. Because of the elaborate embroidery, it costs about $1000 to have it made (the entire bunad, sans headlinen and jewelry, costs at least $3000, or about a month, month and a half's wages, but the materials with the pattern cost $170. I have only seen a couple of women with it.

The embroidery is part Hardanger, and then cutwork, both single (in the small border) and double (in the main border). You then cast over the double cutwork, so that you get a netting, and finally you weave thread to 'color the squares' to make the pattern, which is the famous Selbu rose, because that is where they found several examples about 100 years ago, when they recreated the whole bunad from remnants of 18th C clothing. When women married, they stopped using it as a headlinen, and instead wrapped their children in it when they carried them to church for baptism. I will wear it next Saturday, May 17th, which is our Constitution Day, and the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Norwegian constitution.

[Arkansas Granny]

1. That is beautiful. I can't imagine how many hours you have put into that.

[KitSileya]

2. Thank you.

And quite a lot of hours, especially these last 6 weeks. It would have been such a shame not to finish it before this year's 17. of May.

It was quite a learner's piece, lemme tell you. The instructions were copies from old carbon copies from the 60s, and I had no idea what some of the stitches were. I had to dig into the old books at the library to find some of them. And there's tons of mistakes that I made as I went along simply because I had never done something like this before. I thought about that as I embroidered - this is based on really old ones they found in the back of closets of old farms, and stuffed into pillows and whatnot. What if some of the things we now consider hallow, like the non-symmetry of the pattern between the roses in the main border, is because the crafter miscounted the first one, and then kept going rather than unravel it?

[SunSeeker]

3. Wow. Congratulations. I wish I had that kind of patience.

I am sure you will get many compliments on May 17!

[SheilaT]

4. It looks gorgeous.

I had a friend back when I lived in Minneapolis who did Hardanger, and she tried to convince me it was quite easy, but I could tell just by looking it was difficult. I like straightforward fine embroidery myself.

Please post a picture of you in the entire outfit.

[pipi_k]

5. Gorgeous!!!

I can tell it took a ton of work to do that!


I often sit and wonder about beautiful and complicated stitchery, who first figured out how to do it...and, probably even more amazing, how did that person manage to remember for next time and pass on the instructions if most people long long ago were mainly illiterate...

[KitSileya]

6. Yes! And it's even worse now that so much of it is dying out.

There's a generation lacking there, where women were overwhelmed with work and home, where they simply didn't have time to learn these things, and so when the grandmother generation (or rather great-grandmother generation) dies out, we will lose a lot of cultural knowledge. The last government created a red list of endangered craft techniques, like they do with endangered species, to try to identify what is in danger of being lost, and to try to gather as much knowledge about the ways of doing stuff as possible. As a childfree person who likes crafting, I hope to learn some of these things so that I can carry them over to future generations. It would be such a loss if we were to forget these techniques just when we are in an excellent position to document them with videos, pictures, easy sharing and publishing.

BTW,
Here's a horrible pic of me in my national costume:
[IMG][/IMG]

[pipi_k]

7. Very nice photo...

is your entire outfit hand embroidered?

[KitSileya]

8. No, it isn't.

Most of it is sewn on machine, but the shirt has handsewn whitework on it, and the whole thing is tailored. This is one of the simplest of the Norwegian bunads, as it has no embroidery on the skirt or vest, nor the apron. No other bunad is so devoid of colored embroidery. It is based on clothing samples from the Roccoco period, late 1700s, just as damask fabrics were at the height of fashion, which is why the vest and apron are of damask wool and linen respectively.

In addition to this red version, there is also a blue and a green, as well as a black, in the latter, the damask pattern of the vest is in yellow on a black background. The linen and wollen fabrics were woven on the farms of the area, so cotton and silk was considered finer, because they were 'boughten' cloth, and many other bunads have silk handkerchiefs or shawls. Ours is too plain for that, and glad am I for it, to be honest. I like mine exceedingly well in its plainness - I hardly have any patterned clothes in my everyday wardrobe!

The great thing about it, is that the bunad is acceptable wear to any great traditional occasions. Baptisms, weddings, the opening of a new hospital, state dinners - you can wear your bunad there to no censure. Makes life easier to know it's in the closet.

[catchnrelease]

9. WOW!

That's impressive! You obviously are a very patient person to take the time and effort to do that work. Well done.