Sunday, May 24, 2009

Putting the pillow to bed

Today I finally finished my Kyrgyz pillow, an adaptation of a motif from a fragment of a tush kyiz or ceremonial bed hanging. The original was embroidered by an incredibly patient person in Kyrgyzstan in Siberia.

The seven-foot-long fragment was embroidered with cotton thread on cotton material indigenous to the area. My adaptation was stitched in basketweave using Silk & Ivory thread on 13-count canvas. I've tried to duplicate the original colors as closely as possible, and the size of my canvas is exactly the same as the original motif.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a stunner!! Thank you for showing the original and your adaptation side-by-side. It's good for everyone to see how we take different types of art and adapt them to needlepoint. This is a very beautiful adaptation. It's so hard to imagine how many hours the original artist spent on this piece. But it survived for a lifetime! And it was created with love.
Yours will last a lifetime as well, maintaining a piece of ethnic art that you told us is dying out. Thank you for creating it.

Jane said...

Wow, this is a stunning piece, it looks fantastic. Thank you for sharing

Edy said...

Looks terrific!

Front Range Stitcher said...

Very nice job. Your adaptation is quite beautiful and colors vibrant. Thank you for sharing this dying artform.

Love to Stitch 99 said...

Anne,

This is just lovely and you must be happy to be done with all this black background (smiling)

What will you show us next?

Pierrette =^..^=

Possibilities, Etc. said...

This is totally beautiful!! You deserve a special award for all that black basketweave. I like the border on that fabric.

EHC said...

Simply stunning!