Maderian Embroidery

Funchal is the city, Maderia the Island, and Portugal the relevant country. Like many locations, unique styles of local clothing and stitchery developed in the last several hundred years, especially with the import of commercial fabrics and threads. It is also obviously Portuguese; sidewalks with patterns.

Traditional embroidery here is a variation of white on white cutwork with blue on which being first seen no earlier than 18xx and brown on ivory only in the second half of the 20th century. There is a small embroidery museum (from which I include a few pictures taken before I saw the sign saying no photos). I stopped at two of the Embroidery Factories, one of which was an actual working location.

The process is as follows – drafting of patterns, punching of patterns, transfer of the pattern to the fabric. What follows then is the hand (mostly) embroidery followed by finishing. Most locations also sell some needlepoint (most of which looked like it was French/DMC with the body of the work completed leaving the background stitching up to the purchaser. You can see that there were cubby upon cubby containing current and historically used patterns. What I also was informed is that the government, in an effort to protect the industry does not allow patterns, materials etc to DIY. Kind of explains the many stores offering embroidered linens and garments and the absence of any remotely resembling needle craft (wonder what they do about the Internet – plain brown wrapper?)

This also seemed to be the correct post in which to place the current knitting update.

The shadow shawl is complete as of today. After completing a couple of rows on the pumpkins in Hocus Pocus I switched over to the shadow jacket. I was at the point where I needed to cast the body onto both sides of the first sleeve. Rather than follow the directions and have one side off 1/2 a row I elected a provisional cast. When I get to the neck split, I will go back and three needle bind off under the arms from the provisional stitches (which shouldn’t show in the black although I may go nuts during the execution). It was at this point I found that everything no longer fit on one needle. I don’t’ think it will be quite as hard to go back and work the second sleeve in, since it is 15 rows short of complete to the shoulder.

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2 Responses to Maderian Embroidery

  1. HelenHalla says:

    Gorgeous! Love the fairisle, especially.

  2. HelenHalla says:

    Also –
    I love black figure on multicolor background. First time I saw it was with a knitting machine pattern. Used the concept once on a vest that used up lots of short stripes of hand spun natural dye experiments. So what’re you up to besides ogling needlework and knitting?

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