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LIST OF CONTENTS

© The Goodwill Art Service LtdSeries 8, Set 79

Part 1 — Historical, ethnographic and contemporary practices

LIST OF CONTENTS Introduction

PART 1 - Historical, ethnographic and contemporary practices Defining embroidery Early examples; surviving traditions; contemporary approaches Pieced work Quilting, patchwork and appliqué; recycling fabric; new design methods

PART 2 - Suggested classroom activities Now you see it, now you don’t; third eye; telling tales; Fante proverbs; memories and meanings; generating ideas; using kits

SEWN, PIECED AND EMBROIDERED TEXTILES

This set considers how fabric can be cut, reassembled and decorated to make textiles both for practical and aesthetic purposes.

GOODWILL ART GUIDE — the essential teaching resource for craft, design and culture

PART 3 - Looking at the imagesFRANCE Bayeux tapestryENGLAND Hannah Smith’s casketENGLAND SamplerENGLAND King Charles SpanielENGLAND Needlepoint, K. FassettENGLAND Jay Girl, L. MillerENGLAND Basking Aphrodite V, A. KettleENGLAND Sand section lV, P. BinnsENGLAND Bustle, L. MitchisonENGLAND Herve Douglas..., M. NicholsonENGLAND Charlemagne, M. Brennand-WoodENGLAND Poppies jacket, T. SearleBALKANS Woman’s blouseETHIOPIA Man’s coatTURKMENISTAN Camel blanketPAKISTAN Woman’s blouse frontGHANA Fante flagN. AMERICA Sioux tent coverN. AMERICA Quilt, S. Taylor Middleton RogersN. AMERICA Baltimore Bride’s QuiltENGLAND Crazy quiltENGLAND High magic patchwork, L. BostonENGLAND Intercut Fish Harmony, P. BurbidgeENGLAND Aquarius 3, M. WalkerENGLAND Jack the Treacle-Eater, J. Worrall Hood

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Jay Girl, L. Miller

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LIST OF CONTENTS

© The Goodwill Art Service LtdSeries 8, Set 79

Part 1 — Historical, ethnographic and contemporary practices

INTRODUCTION

The linen shirts worn traditionally by Yugoslavian peasants were elaborately embroidered. The same designs and stitches are still being used.

Today people who use needles, scissors, threads and fabrics draw in many ways on historical and cultural sources for subject matter and techniques. Professional makers are likely to have studied art, craft or design at degree level and been encouraged to develop their own expressive synthesis of patchwork, quilting, appliqué and embroidery traditions. This approach also influences domestic and amateur trends. All kinds of fibres and fabrics and other non-textile based materials — for example new and recycled paper, plastic, leather and metal — provide background material to sew on or are used to sew with.

These notes suggest ways in which pupils’ practical work can be developed in response to their understanding of how and why sewn, pieced and embroidered textiles have been created and used. This is one of three Goodwill folders exploring textiles. Set 77, Constructed Textiles considers how fabric — high-tech or traditional — is made by felting or bonding, weaving and knitting natural or synthetic fibres together, using hand, power and digital tools. Set 78, Printed, Dyed and Painted Textiles discusses how colour and pattern can be applied to fabric after it has been constructed.

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LIST OF CONTENTS

© The Goodwill Art Service LtdSeries 8, Set 79

Part 1 — Historical, ethnographic and contemporary practices

Historical, ethnographic and contemporary practices

DEFINING EMBROIDERY

Embroidery involves decorating a pre-existing fabric — with or without a practical function — using threads and a needle and on occasions attaching other decorative elements. These can include natural materials such as feathers, bones, horn, teeth, shells, beetle wings, fish scales, seeds and pebbles and man-made items, such as beads, mirrors, buttons, sequins, coins and bells. The list keeps growing, as craftspeople explore the decorative and expressive potential of recycled objects — sweet papers, metal bottle tops, plastic toys, old zips. Embroidery is often worked on a foundation of woven fabric, or sometimes other flexible surfaces such as bark cloth, parchment, animal skins, felt and plastic. Many different threads can be used: those spun from natural sources such as silk, cotton, linen, wool, even human hair, animal

sinews, or synthetic fibres such as rayon or nylon ‘fish’ gut, metal wire and plastic strips. Stitches can be made by hand or by machines powered by treadle or electricity and guided manually, punch cards or, since the introduction of computers, digital impulses.

Early examplesIn primitive societies such decoration was significant. Rooted in ancient beliefs and superstitions it may have provided symbolic protection for the wearer against evil spirits and pagan gods by praising or appeasing them. Some groups of people, like the Kuna Indians of Panama and the Kuba in Africa (see left), seem to have used stitchery to transfer the protective patterns tattooed on their bodies to their costume. In the 12th century Marco Polo, writing about his real or imagined travels to China refers to tattooing as ‘flesh embroiderie’. The perishable nature of fabric means that few early examples of embroidery have survived, despite the custom of wrapping the bodies of humans and animals as part of the ritual of burial. Such evidence of ancient decorated textiles does exist at Mehgarh in Sindh, Pakistan, and in the depiction of patterned cloth on a statue of a man found in the valley of the lower Indus dating to 2000 BC, yet there are virtually no physical examples.

The Kuba people in Zaire (now the Republic of Congo) have a tradition of producing fine embroidery. The fabric, made from palm-leaf fibres, or raffia, is loomed by the men, who also hem and piece it together. Working from memory, the women embroider animated designs onto the cloth. The finished, highly-valued fabric is used to decorate walls or worn as cloaks.

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LIST OF CONTENTS

© The Goodwill Art Service LtdSeries 8, Set 79

Part 3 — Looking at the images