Sardinian Knotted Embroidery square mat

In a very similar vein to my recent post about my Portuguese Whitework sampler (square mat, always catches eyes!), today I thought you might enjoy the Square Mat from my book Sardinian Knotted Embroidery.

Sardinian knotted embroidery is known as Punt ’e Nù, and comes from the town of Teulada in Sardinia. (That’s Sardinia, off the coast of Italy, below Corsica. Not Scandinavia, as people often read it as! The number of people who read the cover and say “Oh, Scandinavian Knotted Embroidery” always surprises me.)

This is a really unique style of embroidery, which is worked so that the stitching sits almost entirely on the front of the fabric. When people turn it over, they’re surprised by how little there is visible on the back.

The patterns are worked with hundreds or thousands – depending on the size of the piece you’re working – of tiny little knots that sit on the front of the fabric. It makes a very textural embroidery.

Because they’re all knots, if you make a mistake, well… they’re knots… 🙂 so it’s best not to make mistakes! The knots are coral knots, which is a the most simple knot, apart from the knots that form themselves unhelpfully in our thread as we’re trying to stitch! Working them is not difficult. Getting them in the right place can be.

I designed this project as a “wow project” to go on the cover of the book. The motifs include cockerels, hearts, cherries, teeth (I’ll never forget a lovely Sardinian lady who was explaining some of the traditional motifs, tapping on her teeth and saying “dentini!”), and crosses.