When I was on the needlework cruise earlier this year, I had some really interesting conversations with some of the students. One lady, Irene, said that she had visited Cuba and while there, she had seen people working whitework embroidery. She wondered if I would be interested in seeing some? Would I ever!
After the cruise I duly received a package in the mail from Irene, with a variety of whitework embroidery in it. What a delight!
The work is on a very finely woven fabric, which looks to be cotton, though may have some additional other fibre in it. The thread is also very fine – about the thickness of one strand of floss – and has quite a bit of sheen to it. I’d say it is some sort of synthetic fibre.
The central motif of an eight pointed star is worked on a mesh of drawn thread work, with the star itself woven into the fabric.
The drawn thread work around the central motif echoes the central eight pointed star, using the same shape, but worked in a very complicated drawn thread work pattern.
It was lovely to see this example of whitework from a place where I had no idea that there was a whitework tradition! Thank you Irene, for sharing this embroidery with me! Next post, I will show you some more of the embroidery that she loaned to me.
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
Cuba would be an exotic destination for your next research project!
Wow! Thanks so much for sharing this with us. It just proves once again, you can’t stop the creative spirit in women (and men!) It exists in every culture, in every population, in every continent! This is exquisite!