Is It Norwegian Wood?

No, it is Swedish Trees! Let me explain...I was looking for inspiration for the latest panel in the Cross Country Collaboration Project I am doing with Kirsten. I was glad of a return to regular, evenweave stitching, after a month of less structured embroidery on the Advent Picture. We'd both been busy and allowed ourselves extra time. I wanted something which was winter, not necessarily Christmas in theme [sounds a bit like Narnia!] And I discovered an embroidery technique called Swedish Weaving [aka Huck Work] I like Scandi stuff, so I researched a little more.

In the mid 1800s, a Quaker guy called William Christy, was procuring cotton goods in Manchester. His son Henry went off travelling, and saw Turkish workers in Istanbul handweaving cotton fabric with a looped pile. He came home, and got Samuel Holt, one of his employees, to design a machine to make this fabric, which we now call terry-towelling [from French 'tire' meaning to draw out. And Christy's "Turkish towels" became the thing for drying your hands, body and anything else[especially after Queen Victoria became hooked on them after the great Exhibition] 

But for the previous two centuries, towels had been made from Huckaback fabric - a linen [later cotton/linen blend] which had a loose weave, with some of the weft threads being 'floats' which made it both rougher, and very absorbent. A form of embroidery had developed over the years, particularly popular in Sweden, where contrast threads were woven through the loose floats on the huck to make designs. And it was all on the top surface - nothing on the back, except maybe starting and finishing stitches.

I found loads of examples of this online [I had never heard of it until a fortnight ago] The patterns are really hard to follow, usually weird dashes on a grid, accompanied by a photo.The main features of this technique are

1. it is all worked on top of the fabric, nothing underneath
2. the threads go from one side of the fabric to the other, the design is linear
3. However you begin at the centre stitch, with an equal length of thread either side - and work half of it L-R and then the other half R-L
4. patterns are made by varying the length of stitch and adding vertical or diagonal stitches

I found a line of trees which looked sort of like Christmas trees, and it took two practice pieces before I understood what I was doing, and began work on the main project cloth. Then I had to unpick it all due to a mistake. I had seven different shades of green for my trees, a different brown stitch for the line of earth at the bottom, and one shade of blue for the sky. Then I added golden trunks, to mad eit a bit more festive.

And here is the back- hardly any threads visible- just the 7 green starts & finishes woven through the floats on the back. And two gold trunks. Then I learned how to finish 'on top' so the remaining ends are invisible!

I have enjoyed this new technique enormously. Like the blackwork/Spanish work, it is one I want to use again.

We are coming towards the end of this project, only two sections and the border left to complete!