Cushion Cover in Huck Embroidery or Swedish Darning - Series 1

These are the working instructions for this Huck embroidery design. It's almost 30 years old. The threads are starting to fray thanks to my mishandling. I could not find (as in I don't know where I can buy)the fabric used for this style of embroidery. But I noticed from other online images that this can be done using matty fabric as well.

A friend of mine recently dumped her needlework supplies on me. This fabric was part of it. I consider it a precious gift.

So, here I go.  The image below is a close up of the finished embroidery. I plan  to make this into a cushion cover.

Materials Required:

1. For this particular project, I've used 15.5" X 15.5" cross-stitch fabric (matty cloth). Also note that the fabric I've used here is not even weave. The design has a slightly different effect on even weave fabric.  The orange diamonds for instance won't be as elongated as they appear here.
2. I've used all 6 strands of Anchor stranded cotton throughout. I used a little more than 3 skeins of golden yellow and grey and a little more than 2 skeins of green and orange. These colours were not my first choice.  But then, I have a stash of thread I want to use up. But, in the end the piece turned out okay. Everyone at home likes it very much. Then again, they like everything I do. So...
3. I used tapestry needle for two reasons. One is the eye of the needle is large enough to accommodate all 6 strands and two, the tip of a tapestry needle is blunt and therefore through the raised yarn in the fabric without catching and pulling the fabric.

Method:
This design is worked in 4 steps. So, I'll explain in them in 4 posts. But before we begin, we need to prepare the fabric for the embroidery. Read 'How to Prepare Fabric for Counted Thread Embroidery' and prepare your fabric. 

Huck Embroidery Sampler

Been real busy. I wish there are more hours in a day to do all the things I want to do.

I am posting a couple of Huck embroidery patterns I managed to get done for my Huck Sampler.





There are a few more patterns I am working on. I'll post pictures as soon as I complete them.

Huck Embroidery Patterns

A couple of friends and I have decided to go for a walk atleast three days a week. The crazy thing is the only time all 3 of us are free is between 2 p.m to 3.30 pm. 
We try to have an early lunch (around 12.30 p.m) and go out with shopping bags braving the hot afternoon sun. Our husbands call us crazy and mine says the sun is making me crazier. All in all we are having a nice time.

Here are the patterns I promised.


I found the first pattern in the second picture in a shopping bag that used to belong to my grandmother who passed away 5 years ago. It was done as a repeat all over pattern on pista green fabric. She had used the basic green, blue and red threads for the embroidery.The piece is very old probably 40 yrs. Figuring out how the pattern was done was a bit difficult, as the piece was obviously washed and ironed several times over the years. It is actually very simple, as you can see by clicking on the picture for a larger version.



I don't particularly like the next two patterns. But I have learnt over the years that one man's poison is another man's food. There is no telling what my students will like. This, after all is a sampler of patterns.

Huck Embroidery

My latest project is Huck embroidery. I have started embroidering a table cloth in this style. It might end up as a runner.

I have 7 uncles on my mother’s side. But for 2 the rest were craft enthusiasts. One of them still is. She does a lot of Huck embroidery. Her son-in-law is an engineer in the army and they get free army issue toweling cloth (I don’t know why this fabric is called so, maybe they were originally issued to be used as towels) on which this style of embroidery is done. Every time she visits her daughter in Delhi, she gets together with the neighbors to embroider. The funny thing is my aunt speaks only Tamil or Telugu and her embroidery friends speak only Hindi. God knows how they manage to communicate. But she comes back with a lot of lovely patterns copied from somebody’s grandmother’s shopping bag or somebody’s mother-in-law’s tablecloth embroidered some 20 – 50 years ago. And every time I visit her, I have something new to add to my collection.
Over the years I have accumulated quite a few patterns myself, some from my own grandmother, some from my mother’s imagination, some others from my school days, some from the collections of my students’ mothers or mothers – in – law. I found it mostly done on shopping bags.

While researching the subject recently, I found this blog 

Swedish Huck Embroidery  has posted some samples and the pictures are very clear.

Complete Guide to Needlework – A Reader’s Digest Publication has a chapter on this topic.

Huck Embroidery Table Cloth

This is a Huck embroidery tablecloth we did in Needlework Class when I was in class IX - 1982. It looks a bit shabby up close as I never bothered to hand wash it. Now I regret it because I am not able to get the special fabric this kind of embroidery is worked on. May have to improvise.


Here is the close-up anyway.