#colcha

[sr-roto]

[professorpski]

Piecework, Winter 2022

The cover of this issue features a Jacobean Crewelwork Project Bag by Deanna Hall west which accompanies an article on the history of crewelwork by Jacqui McDonald. This article is actually an excerpt from Royal School of Needlework Essential Stitch Guides: Crewelwork. So you can try your hand and see if you want to pursue the craft further.

You see as well a colcha, Spanish for bedspread or blanket, which also refers to a long, self-couching stitch which is what embroiders this one with flora and birds. Julia R. Gomez wrote both the article on the history of this kind of needlework and offers a lesson and a project featuring a peahen. 

Those Sports Mittens have both a history and a pattern written up by Karen Penders St. Clair whose Grandmother LeRoux first typed up the basic directions. She made them in Kelbourne Woolens Germantown worsted weight yarn, a revived American brand, so you have both pattern and yarn with a bit of history. You see here the outer edge from the Shetland Old Shell Hap and Half Hap, which are a square and a triangular shawl respectively explained by Elizabeth Johnston. While the borders are pretty lace stitches, the body is done in garter stitch, a thick and warm stitch which surely makes sense coming from the Shetland Islands.

I always feature the projects, but there are lots of historical articles on felting wool, on Coptic textiles, and paper packets of needles and on needle gauges, small items that remind us that everything has a history.  

You can find this issue at your local yarn shop, LYS, or here online: https://pieceworkmagazine.com/subscription

[welele]

[dogandcatcomics]

Canine representation in detail and wider picture of an embroidered cover (colcha), mid-17th to early 18th century, wool plain weave embroidered with wool and cotton, in long arm cross, stem, and back stitches. By an unidentified maker active in Mexico, 17th-18th cent. Denman Waldo Ross Collection 96.109, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA @mfaboston. Seen as part of the terrific "Fabric of a Nation" quilt show at the MFA, though this one seems the play with the boundaries of what I regarded as a quilt.

Fabric of a Nation

Quilts tell stories about their makers and collectors. History is told by artists including Bisa Butler, Harriet Powers, and other American

[nica-luke]

Alicia’s blanket

Pattern by me. Knitted by me.

I wanted a baby blanket in bold colors for my granddaughter. Since I have little time, it had to be a simple and quick to knit pattern. So I decided to use garter stitch; two balls of yarn per color. To get an even and nice edge, I slipped the first stich of each row as if to purl.

[desertdollranch]

Learn colcha embroidery with Josefina

Hi friends! It’s me, Josefina, here again to teach you another fun craft in honor of the week of my tenth birthday. It’s my gift to you all.

This piece I’m holding up in the photo is called colcha. That’s both the name for an embroidered item, as well as a method of embroidery that makes your designs looks pretty and with an interesting texture. It’s useful, easy for almost anyone to learn, and not expensive at all. I’m sure you’ll love doing it as much as I do. 

Maybe you’ve read about it in my story, called Josefina’s Surprise. It’s about the  Christmas time when my sisters and I had to repair my mother’s altar cloth. You can see the lovely, intricate flowers in Clara’s lap. 

Why did we have to repair it? You’ll have to read the book to find out!

Clara had a special talent for colcha, but all of us learned the skill when we were very young. The method of colcha is easy enough for a child to learn, but it takes a long time to learn the patience to sit still and focus on the pattern. But don’t worry--you don’t have to be as good as my Mamá to enjoy it! That’s why I included the instructions in my book, called Josefina’s Craft Book. In it, you’ll find this very simple pattern of a little goat jumping over a flower.

If you like it a lot and want to learn more patterns, you can check your library or a quilt store for books about embroidery. I used a handbook made by the Albuquerque chapter of an embroidery guild that’s got lots of designs that have been used in New Mexico for hundreds of years! 

Colcha has been around for a long time. It started in medieval Europe, and has been popular ever since. When you’re embroidering by firelight or dim oil lamp light, sometimes it’s hard to see your stitches, so colcha uses a couching stitch to go back over your straight stitches and place diagonal lines of thread across it. So it has a practical use by filling in the gaps, and as a bonus, it also looks pretty neat! 

Colcha was brought to North America from Spain in the 1600s, and it was popular in very isolated villages of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, because people there had to make everything by hand. They raised their own wool, spun it into yarn, and wove it into cloth. Then they embroidered it give it distinctiveness, beauty, and a little more durability. Special items like altar cloths were embroidered with very intricate designs, and everyday items like bedspreads and handkerchiefs were a little more simple. 

Sometime in the middle of the 1800s, colcha stopped being so popular, because trade with the United States gave people the chance to buy factory-made cloth items. And that was a lot more practical, because it saved time, and also families didn’t have to save any home-raised wool for themselves--they could sell or trade it all. 

It wasn’t until the Great Depression of the 1930s that colcha, and all handicrafts, become popular again. Nowadays, commercial linens are back in style, but people all around the world still appreciate colcha! In Europe and America, it’s mostly used for decorative items. And you can see very old examples of the best Spanish colcha in museums all over the Southwest. Here is one that was displayed in a Santa Fe museum a few years ago: 

You won’t be making anything like that today... you’ll start much smaller! 

Ready to start? 

Here’s what you’ll need: 

A cloth background. You can use anything you want to embroider. I used a cotton with a loose weave that used to be a tablecloth. Wool embroidery yarn. Wool is best because it’s thick and chunky, so it fills in gaps much easier. It’s not as thick as knitting yarn. You might find it in craft stores sold as “crewel”. Of course, you can use cotton or silk thread, but you’ll have to make your stitches much smaller and more numerous!  A needle. Scissors. An embroidery hoop. 

Once you have all that, copy this pattern onto your fabric. 

You can use transfer paper, or print it and trace over it onto the fabric with a pen. The original pattern is about 2.5 inches long from the goat’s tail to the end of its nose. 

Once that’s done, secure your embroidery hoop. Make sure the fabric is very taut.

Now thread your needle, and make your first few stitches. Starting at the bottom left of the goat’s body, make a straight, diagonal stitch. 

Then make a few more parallel to it but not touching it, sort of like zebra stripes or ladder rungs. 

Here’s how your stitches will progress.

First, the base stitches.

Then, go back over the base stitches with the couching stitches (green).

See how the couching stitches form a sort of zipper? They cross into the gaps left by the neighboring stitches. If you imagine them as filling odd and even-numbered spaces, it would look like this:

If the yarn is thick enough and you've done it right, then you should be filling in all the gaps, giving the embroidery a nice texture. 

Keep going! Make your base stitches longer to fit the goat’s body, but keep the couching stitches the same size. 

Fill in the goat’s legs, ears, and tail the same way.

Then do the flower.

And you’re done! 

Wasn’t that fun and easy? Here are a few more I’ve made, with cotton thread. Small stitches make a totally different texture, but they take more time. 

Until next time! Have fun!

[nica-luke]

Lotta’s blanket

Pattern and knitting by me.

Pattern:

The blanket was made in garter stitch alternating colors (one ridge per color).

Color pattern: Ridge 1 mint Ridge 2 white Ridge 3 mint Ridge 4 white Ridge 5 rose Ridge 6 white Ridge 7 rose Ridge 8 white

Repeat until desired length.

The border is crocheted: 2 rows sc in mint, 1 row sc in rose, 1 row sc mint.

The yarn became extremely soft after washing, so the blanket wasn’t as dense as I wanted it to be, but it’s ok. It is the cosiest and warmest blanket my granddaughter is wrapped in. :-)

[crochecoracao-blog]

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