Swedish weaving

When my grandmother died about ten years ago, she left me a box of embroidered towels - several pairs in beautiful colors. I never really knew much about them except that they were embroidered by her in the 1940s. I sometimes used the red and white ones during the holidays, but otherwise kept them packed away.

When I learned of the dishtowel apron challenge last month I considered using one of the towels for my entry. But then found the fruit towel and changed my mind. So, I had to laugh when I saw Sarah's entry in the gallery - it was almost exactly what I was going to do. I commented on it and that led me to do a bit of research about the embroidery technique, which is called Swedish weaving, huck weaving, huckaback darning, huck embroidery, and punto yugoslavo.

While it dates back several centuries, it had a resurgence in the US in the 1930s and 40s (which is when my grandmother did hers) using huck toweling. Traditional huck fabric has pairs of threads, called floaters, that alternately run vertical and then horizontal on top of the fabric to make a row. Swedish weaving is the embroidery done on this fabric by sliding the floss under the pairs of threads to create a geometric design on top of the fabric - no threads on the back!



If you buy vintage towels they'll likely be huck but it's more common these days to use Monk's cloth for this type of embroidery.

There are several traditional patterns, like trees:







and mirror image designs:





Here's a pillow I made from a vintage turquouse huck towel with black embroidery - love this color combination!



If you'd like more information, here are a couple of sites you can check out:

Huck Weaving
Huckery
Swedish Weaving

Dishtowels into Aprons

The gallery is up at Tie One On for last month's apron challenge. Our mission was to create an apron using a dish or tea towel. A simple idea really. But I couldn't resist adding a few embellishments to mine.



The towel is vintage and is one I got in a box of vintage linens that someone gave me. 1940s, I think. I love the colors and the design of the fruit. I had some red polkadot reproduction feedsack fabric that I used to make the waistband and pocket. You may recognize the yellow stripe from my last apron. I had just a little left - enough for the ties and a small border along the top of the pocket. I added a big red button to the pocket and, because that still wasn't enough, I used a bit more of the polkadots along the bottom.







That made a pretty long apron, which is fine for me because I'm 5'9, but it was a bit too long for my model - the lovely Lyn who was visiting this week from Tennessee and who agreed to model it for me. I'm happy with how this apron turned out and with how easy it was to do. I have several cute vintage towels with embroidery and this is another option for using them.

Be sure to check out the other submissions - there are some very talented ladies out there.