A Seventeenth Century Embroidery

This is a Victorian era reduced copy of a seventeenth century curtain embroidered with crewels. So the scale has been reduced from the actual size of the original. It must have been a beautiful thing the curtain, don't you think. I imagine the thread colours were rich and earthy, aubergine purple, peacock blue, leaf green, Morrocan red, and mustard yellow.

This is a detail of the design showing some of the design inspiration for the thread work. Crewelwork is over a thousand years old, the Bayeux tapestry uses crewelwork techniques. It is worked in wool, with different embroidery stitches filling a design outline applied to the fabric.

Its a quite naturalistic style, and yet with lovely free flowing lines and layout, feels sort of Persian to me. What do you think?

French knots, satin stitch and couched threads, and built up layers giving a texturally rich surface.

So I love it, what a wonderful form of embroidery, and I want to have a play with it, but I am not sure about the woolen thread, I think I will play with a finer form to start with, maybe working with applique.