Traditional Hungarian Embroidery (2) Siogard

Colourful folk costumes from Siogard in Hungary; fantastic socks, slipper shoes and brightly embroidered blouses , waistcoats and aprons with pleated skirts. Veronika Vargaine Kovacs, has written a book on the embrodiery of Siogard and the embroidery museum that has recently opened there. Typical of the embroidery from Siogard is cut work bordered by blue and purple embroidery.

Grain sack upholstery

These two images are from the October issue of The World of Interiors in a feature Anna Wintours Long Island Home. The chairs upholstered in Grain Sack fabric are good example of how a mixture of fabric can be use to good effect

Rare Brand Market at Goodwood

Parna will be a the Rare Brand Christmas market along with 80 or so other bijou brands . The market takes place ( indoors) at Goodwood Race Course 17 and 18 November with late night shoppping on Wednesday. Click on the title bar to take yiou to the Rare Brand website for more information.

Selvedge Christmas Fair

We will be exhibiting at the Selvedge christmas fair December 4 in Highgate London. There will be 30 or so textile related stalls, handpicked by the Selvedge team. We are honoured to have been asked and it should be a fabulous day!

For those of you not faimilar with Selvedge ; they publish a fantastically beautiful magazine- a must have for textile lovers!

The Mary Dress

This is the Mary dress created by Gemma Buxton from a vintage hemp sheet from parna and two beautifully appliqued and embroidered panels.

Gemmas work brings together an interest in the history of art of embroidery with concerns about how we interact with the physical world in the 21st century. She uses narrative from everyday life , in this case the struggle between pests and food production.

The Mary Dress was created for a woman who struggles with the nature and the environment to survive. The dress is made from home grown, spun and woven hemp, the same fabric that was worn by peasants working in the fields. and is adorned with the two finely panels and the piece as a whole represents the struggles and glories in a ordinary working life.

The dress is on display at weekends until the 17th October at St Marys in the Marsh , Kent and is part of the "Art in Romney Marsh" event 2010.

There is more about the dress and Gemmas other work on her blog
Contact Gemma for more information
http://www.gemmabuxton.com/
http://www.gemmassewntogether.blogspot.com/

Textile Society Fair this Sunday

A reminder that the The Textile Society is holding its first London Fair at Kensington Hall on Sunday. There will be lots of very interesting antique and vintage textiles from many parts of the world. Parna will have a selection of Vintage Hungarian grain sacks, Transylvanian embrodiery, grain sack cushions amongst other things.

Doors open at 10.00 ( 9.30 for trade ) Admission is £7.50

Hungarian Embroidery (2) Kalotaszeg

Kalotaszeg is a region in Transylvania which was once part Hungary. This area has retained many folk traditions and is famous for , amongst other things its embroidery.

The traditional embroidery from this area is called "written" embroidery, the designs were originally drawn in freehand by the writing woman of the area, who were skilled and memorised many designs. The embroidery was traditionally done on home loomed hemp and in one colour using wool or cotton thread, most commonly red or blue or white.

The second from top image is of one of our cushions, drawn by a writing woman on home loomed vintage hemp and embroidered in cotton. This is a traditional design but embroidered in a non- traditional coloured thread.

The other images are Kalotaszeg embroidery patterns . I was lucky enough to find a book containing hundreds of these, we will be trying some more out soon.