History of Decorated Fabric  
 
Drawn Thread?  
I found a window on the medieval world in a book called FLOWERS AND TREES OF TUDOR ENGLAND, by Clare Putnam. 
I say window because it is truly difficult for us here today to understand medieval industry. Their guild 
workshops produced copies of books, embroideries, furniture and anything else needed by the homemaker. They 
had books literally copied by hand for use in decorating whatever thing was needed. 
 
To really see the history of the motifs we use everyday in our embroidery you need to look at the body of 
embroidery called drawn thread, particularly lace. It is the one technique that has all these designs from 
the Orient. The designs the lace makers used were copied from everything books, woodworks, ironworks, brick 
laying, whatever craft that had usable designs was copied for the embroidery of laces. And the great thing 
for this article is that the lace was done long enough and early enough that we can find a line that is 
almost straight back to the Orient. 
 
Drawn thread is embroidery that is done on fabric that has had it warp and weft threads removed and the 
remaining fabric threads are drawn together or replaced with embroidery. Some embroidery evolved and was
done without the benefit of cloth. 
 
I have been showing you Hardanger, it is a form of drawn thread, and it really is a doorway into 
the world of lace as you will see as when explore laces.  
 
The buttonhole stitches evolved into lace. The buttonhole stitch can literally exist in air, Punto Aira, they call the lace 'stitches in the air' because no cloth is used to make the lace. The leaf on the stitching band below is such an example.
 
 
 
This is my doodle cloth, or actually one of them. I keep this one for times like this when I want to show you something. It is a piece of banding about 3 inches wide.
I haven't done anything special with the edges of this leaf yet except sew it onto the doodle cloth, you can see these stitches by looking at the shiny stitches that are slightly lighter than the other edge stitches.
Learn how to do these stitches.  Join us at my blog.  ©2006, Linda Fontenot, All Right Reserved, no copy can be made without express and written permission from the author. A personal copy is permitted for the individual. Next Page