Among the variety of needlework, which modern craftswomen are keen on, embroidery occupies a special place - one of the most ancient areas of applied art.
Sacred meaning
Once upon a time, with the help of embroidery, the girls decorated their costumes, applied amulets on shirts and belts to their lovers and designated their belonging to one or another kind.
Now this craft has lost its sacred significance, but so far all over the world men and women adorn themselves and their home with hand-made embroidery products.
Hardanger embroidery is one of the oldest forms of this art. And he will be discussed in today's article.
A bit of history
Hardanger - embroidery with openwork patterns, which originated in ancient Egypt.
Basic elements such as a square, a cross and a rectangle are traditional signs that came from Syria and ancient Egypt.
The most popular sign that the Hardanger embroidery is famous for is the eight-pointed star. She is one of the most important symbols embroidered by Indians.
The name of this direction is identified with the longest river of the same name in Norway. For these reasons, historians are still arguing about the country in which the hardanger was originally born.
It is known that hardanger is an embroidery that has adorned all national Norwegian wedding costumes since the 17th century, so many associate it with the Scandinavians.
In the 20th century, this elegant openwork embroidery spread throughout the world. Craftswomen decorate her not only clothes, tablecloths and towels, but also some interior items, for example, Christmas toys.
The main principles that distinguish embroidery hardanger
The book "Hardanger Embroidery" marks the main positions of this type of ironing stitches strictly ordered in size and quantity.
Embroidery directions such as Cypriot lefkaritika, Russian lattice sewing and hemstitching are related in meaning.
Hardanger embroidery refers to counting types, but unlike, for example, a hemstitch, it can fill all the item to be decorated.
Here are the main positions of this style:
• The main condition that must be observed when embroidering in a hardanger style is that the fabric you choose must have uniform weaving, because the main element of this technique is a 4 by 4 square.
• All groups of satin stitches of this technique consist of five stitches per four squares.
• Another condition: if you embroider one row with vertical stitches, then the row following it must have horizontal stitches.
• Embroidery hardanger for beginners is quite complicated, so if you do not already have experience, we recommend lining the canvas.
• If necessary, move the thread, turning the needle under the stitches, then the inside will also look beautiful.
• In the event that you have run out of thread, pull the needle to the wrong side and pass it through the next three stitches, then thread it back through two stitches, bypassing the one from which the thread came out during the first threading, fix the structure with a textile glue.
• Remember that hardanger is an embroidery that does not tolerate any knots!
Materials and tools that come in handy
• A fabric that is suitable for the previously described parameters (flax material is perfect), or canvas.
• Special embroidery needle with a rounded tip.
• The thread is thick enough to cover the smooth surface. Pearl, iris are perfect, less suitable, but acceptable - floss (in this case, do not separate the strands of threads).
• Tiny threads for making lace elements. For these purposes, you can take the floss, dividing the strands into separate threads, or an ordinary sewing thread “10”.
• Scissors of small size with sharpened ends (you need them to cut openwork patterns). This may be special scissors for embroidery, but for lack of such you can use ordinary manicure, pre-treating them with alcohol.
• Large, preferably wooden hoops.
• Tweezers (you can use ordinary for eyebrows).
• Glue for textiles (it is needed not only to fix the stitches when the thread finishes, but also to process the edges of the product).
Fabric preparation
Hardanger - the embroidery is rather capricious, so if you are a beginner, we advise you to pre-prepare the material on which you are going to embroider.
Let's do all the stages of preparing the fabric for beginners.
• For starters, we recommend that you print the pattern you want to embroider in full size.
• From this printed image, determine what size material you need.
• Cut a piece of fabric that is larger than its printed prototype by 2 centimeters on each side.
• After 2 centimeters from the edge of the cut piece, stitch all the edges of the product with a “needle forward” stitch, as follows: each stitch should occupy 4 squares and there should also be a 4 square distance between the stitches.
• Apply textile glue to the edges of the product (those loose 2 centimeters around the perimeter).
Hardanger embroidery workshops
As mentioned earlier, hardanger is embroidery with counted stitch, which is performed in certain blocks. In its appearance, the finished work, executed in this style, resembles a picture from the ancient world.
Hardanger embroidery includes a number of classic elements that are unique to her. However, modern craftswomen diversify this trend with stylized patterns from other varieties of embroidery.
If you want to learn and understand the style in question in this article, you will have to study a few basic stitches. This is what we will do now.
Longitudinal seam
This seam has a second name - looped. Most likely, he got this name due to the fact that it seems that a loop is tied to the outer edge of the outer stitch.
It is executed as follows:
• Insert the needle from the wrong side in the place where the element you are going to embroider starts, and pull the thread from the outside, leaving a small tail from the inside, which is desirable to fix with a drop of textile glue. This will be the beginning of the column.
• Mentally, from the hole into which you stuck the needle, count up 4 holes, at the level of 4 holes, step back another 1 hole to the right and stick the needle there.
• Count 4 holes from the point where the needle was inserted down and insert the thread into the third hole, threading it into the loop formed.
• Repeat such stitches as many times as necessary.
When sewing this, place the stitches as close to each other as possible.
Satin Blocks
Hardanger is an embroidery that necessarily assumes the presence of satin blocks in the pattern.
This is done as follows.
• Make a 4-square vertical stitch.
• Sew a total of 5 such stitches in one block. Each stitch should be 4 cells long.
• After making the last stitch, insert the needle into the adjacent cage and make a horizontal stitch 4 cells long.
• Play a total of 5 such stitches.
• Continue to run smoothing blocks in the same way.
Remember that the threads that connect the embroidery parts must be located strictly under the blocks, otherwise you will ruin all the work by making openwork slits.
Eye Pattern
This element bears such a name due to its resemblance to the human eye with long fluffy eyelashes. By pulling the strings, you open your eyes.
• Mentally designate a square of 5 by 5 squares for yourself.
• Threading threads into 3 cells on each side of the square and leading them out in the middle 3 embroider the plus (+).
• Then, stitching the diagonally lying corners and returning from each corner to the 3 in the middle of the cage, embroider x (x) over the plus.
• Embroider a stitch from each free cell located on the sides of the square, returning each time to the 3 center cell.
Eyes must be embroidered with thin threads. This element can have from 6 to 16 rays.
How to cut threads correctly so as not to spoil the work?
To make your product more unusual and to award it with charm that is characteristic only of the style described in this article, after embroidering all the elements, you will need to make openwork slits on the fabric. Hardanger embroidery lessons in this article include a detailed description of the technique of cutting openwork holes.
• You need to make incisions in places free from embroidery, right next to the satin blocks, leaving whole threads in between the blocks. Use thin scissors for this. An example of successfully cut holes you can see in the photo below.
• Lubricate the ends of the cut threads with a small amount of textile adhesive.
• You can leave whole threads between the cut-out windows in this form or, for greater expressiveness, braid them with a thin thread.
• The trimmed threads should be pulled out with tweezers.
If you do everything right, you will receive a product of simply unreal beauty, which, without a doubt, will be the highlight of your interior or a great gift for people you love.
Hardanger embroidery. Book of ideas for the whole year
Until you ideally have mastered the hardanger technique, it will be difficult for you to come up with patterns for your work yourself. Fortunately, in our time there are a huge number of books with embroidery patterns in this style. Therefore, we advise you to purchase several such prints in order to stock up with ideas for inspiration for a long time.
Until you have done this, we suggest you consider a couple of photographs depicting products that are easy to use even for beginners.
As you can see, this product includes elements such as satin blocks and eyes, the performance of these details we examined with you earlier.
The work below is more complicated, since in addition to the “eyes” and “smoothing blocks” that we studied earlier, it includes a hardanger that is characteristic of the style and an element stylized as a flower called “eight-pointed star”. If you look closely, you will understand that such a star is just a collection of satin horizontal stitches of different sizes.
From this article, you learned about a technique such as hardanger, traced its history, understood what tools you need to purchase to work with it, studied the basic elements and figured out how to make openwork slits correctly.
We hope this article will be the first step in your endeavors regarding such a craft as hardanger embroidery.