Patchwork
Patchwork or "pieced work" is a form of needlework that involves sewing together pieces of fabric into a larger design. The larger design is based on repeating patterns built up with different fabric shapes; these shapes are measured and cut, basic geometric shapes making them easy to piece together. Patchwork is most used to make quilts, but it can be used to make bags, wall-hangings, warm jackets, cushion covers, skirts and other items of clothing; some textile artists work with patchwork combining it with embroidery and other forms of stitchery. When used to make a quilt, this larger patchwork or pieced design becomes the "top" of a three-layered quilt, the middle layer being the batting, the bottom layer the backing. To keep the batting from shifting, a patchwork or pieced quilt is quilted by hand or machine using a running stitch in order to outline the individual shapes that make up the pieced top, or the quilting stitches may be random or ordered overall patterns that contrast with the patchwork composition.
Evidence of patchwork—piecing small pieces of fabric together to create a larger piece and quilting layers of textile fabrics together—has been found throughout history. The earliest examples have been located in Egyptian tombs and in early age of China about 5000 years ago. Further finds have been dated from the early Middle Ages, where layers of quilted fabric were used in the construction of armor—this kept the soldiers warm and protected. Japanese armor was made in a similar fashion. Using this technique, quilts began to appear in households of the 11th to 13th centuries; as the European climate became colder around this time, the incidence of the use of bed quilts rose, so developed the practice of embellishing a simple cloth through the creation of pattern and design, alongside the development of decorative quilting. The tradition of making quilts in this fashion was taken to America by the Pilgrims. Patchwork enjoyed a widespread revival during the Great Depression as a way to recycle worn clothing into warm quilts.
Small and worn pieces of material are suitable for use in patchwork, although crafters today more use new 100% cotton fabrics as the basis for their designs. In the US, patchwork declined after World War II, but was again revived during the American bicentennial. In the past, hand quilting was done in a group around a frame. Instead of quilting, the layers are sometimes tied together at regular intervals with pieces of yarn, a practice known as tying or knotting, which produces a "comforter"; the 2003 Quilting in America survey estimated that the total value of the American quilting industry was $2.7 billion. International quilting exhibitions attract thousands of visitors, while countless smaller exhibitions are held every weekend in local regions. Active cyber-quilting communities abound on the web. "Quilt Art" is established as a legitimate artistic medium, with quilted works of art selling for thousands of dollars to corporate buyers and galleries. Quilt historians and quilt appraisers are re-evaluating the heritage of traditional quilting and antique quilts, while superb examples of antique quilts are purchased for large sums by collectors and museums.
The American Quilt Study Group is active in promotion of research on the history of quilting. In Indian stitching blanket using different small pieces of cloth is an art, it is popularly known as Kaudhi in Karnataka. Such blankets are given as gifts to newborn babies in some parts of Karnataka. Lambani tribes wear skirts with such art. Patchwork is done in various parts of Pakistan in the Sindh region, where they call it ralli. Pakistani ralli quilts are famous all over the subcontinent in the west; these quilts are made by women. Now these are gaining international recognition though they have been making them for thousands of years. There are three traditional structures used to construct a patchwork or pieced composition: 1) the block, 2) overall, 3) strip piecing. Traditional patchwork has identifying names based on the arrangement of shapes. Patchwork blocks are pieced squares made up of colored shapes that repeat specific shapes to create patterns within the square or block, of, say and dark, or contrasting colors.
The blocks can all repeat the same pattern. The patchwork blocks are around 8–10" square, they are sewn together in stacked rows to make a larger composition. Strips of contrasting fabric forming a lattice separate the patchwork blocks from each other; some common patchwork block names are Log Cabin, Drunkard's Path, Bear's Paw and Nine Patch. A unique form of patchwork quilt is the crazy quilt. Crazy quilting was popular during the Victorian era; the crazy quilt is made up of random shapes of luxurious fabric such as velvets and brocades and buttons and other embellishments left over from the gowns they had made for themselves. The patchwork pieces are stitched together forming "crazy" or asymmetric compositions. Fancy embroidery embellishes the seam lines between the individual, pieced shapes; the crazy quilt was a status symbol, as only well-to-do women had a staff to do all the household work, had the time to sew their crazy quilt. Traditionally, the top was left without lining or batting. Many surviving crazy quilts still have the newspaper and other foundation papers used for piecing.
Overall patchwork designs are incrementally pieced geometric shapes stitched togethe
Bast fibre
Bast fibre is plant fibre collected from the phloem or bast surrounding the stem of certain dicotyledonous plants. It provides strength to the stem; some of the economically important bast fibres are obtained from herbs cultivated in agriculture, as for instance flax, hemp, or ramie, but bast fibres from wild plants, as stinging nettle, trees such as lime or linden and mulberry have been used in the past. Bast fibres are classified as soft fibres, are flexible. Fibres from monocotyledonous plants, called "leaf fibre", are classified as hard fibres and are stiff. Since the valuable fibres are located in the phloem, they must be separated from the xylem material, sometimes from the epidermis; the process for this is called retting, can be performed by micro-organisms either on land or in water, or by chemicals or by pectinolytic enzymes. In the phloem, bast fibres occur in bundles that are glued together by calcium ions. More intense retting separates the fibre bundles into elementary fibres, that can be several centimetres long.
Bast fibres have higher tensile strength than other kinds, are used in high-quality textiles, yarn, composite materials and burlap. An important property of bast fibres is that they contain a special structure, the fibre node, that represents a weak point, gives flexibility. Seed hairs, such as cotton, do not have nodes. Plants that have been used for bast fibre include flax, jute, kudzu, milkweed, okra, paper mulberry and roselle hemp. Bast fibres are processed for use in carpet, rope, traditional carpets, hessian or burlap, sacks, etc. Bast fibres are used in the non-woven and composite technology industries for the manufacturing of non-woven mats and carpets, composite boards as furniture materials, automobile door panels and headliners, etc. From prehistoric times through at least the early 20th century, bast shoes were woven from bast strips in the forest areas of Eastern Europe. Where no other source of tanbark was available, bast has been used for tanning leather. International Jute Study Group Bast Fibre cords in Viking ships Bast fibre production with hemp
Rope
A rope is a group of yarns, fibers or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form. Ropes so can be used for dragging and lifting. Rope is thicker and stronger than constructed cord and twine. Rope may be constructed of any long, fibrous material, but is constructed of certain natural or synthetic fibres. Synthetic fibre ropes are stronger than their natural fibre counterparts, they have a higher tensile strength, they are more resistant to rotting than ropes created from natural fibers, can be made to float on water, but synthetic rope possess certain disadvantages, including slipperiness, some can be damaged more by UV light. Common natural fibres for rope are manila hemp, linen, coir, jute and sisal. Synthetic fibres in use for rope-making include polypropylene, polyesters, polyethylene and acrylics; some ropes are constructed of mixtures of several fibres or use co-polymer fibres. Wire rope is made of steel or other metal alloys. Ropes have been constructed of other fibrous materials such as silk and hair, but such ropes are not available.
Rayon is a regenerated fibre used to make decorative rope. The twist of the strands in a twisted or braided rope serves not only to keep a rope together, but enables the rope to more evenly distribute tension among the individual strands. Without any twist in the rope, the shortest strand would always be supporting a much higher proportion of the total load; the long history of rope means. In systems that use the "inch", large ropes over 1 inch diameter such as are used on ships are measured by their circumference in inches. In metric systems of measurement, nominal diameter is given in millimetres; the current preferred international standard for rope sizes is to give the mass per unit length, in kilograms per metre. However sources otherwise using metric units may still give a "rope number" for large ropes, the circumference in inches. Rope is of paramount importance in fields as diverse as construction, exploration, sports and communications, has been used since prehistoric times. To fasten rope, many types of knots have been invented for countless uses.
Pulleys redirect the pulling force to another direction, can create mechanical advantage so that multiple strands of rope share a load and multiply the force applied to the end. Winches and capstans are machines designed to pull ropes; the modern sport of rock climbing uses so-called "dynamic" rope, which stretches under load in an elastic manner to absorb the energy required to arrest a person in free fall without generating forces high enough to injure them. Such ropes use a kernmantle construction, as described below. "Static" ropes, used for example in caving and rescue applications, are designed for minimal stretch. The UIAA, in concert with the CEN, oversees testing. Any rope bearing a GUIANA or CE certification tag is suitable for climbing. Despite the hundreds of thousands of falls climbers suffer every year, there are few recorded instances of a climbing rope breaking in a fall. Climbing ropes, however, do cut when under load. Keeping them away from sharp rock edges is imperative. Rock climbing ropes come with either a designation for double or twin use.
A single rope is the most common and it is intended to be used by itself, as a single strand. Single ropes range in thickness from 9 mm to 11 mm. Smaller ropes wear out faster. Double ropes are thinner ropes 9 mm and under, are intended for use as a pair; these ropes offer a greater margin or security against cutting, since it is unlikely that both ropes will be cut, but they complicate belaying and leading. Double ropes are reserved for ice and mixed climbing, where there is need for two ropes to rappel or abseil, they are popular among traditional climbers, in the UK, due to the ability to clip each rope into alternating pieces of protection. Twin ropes are not to be confused with doubles; when using twin ropes, both ropes are clipped into the same piece of protection, treating the two as a single strand. This would be favourable in a situation; however new lighter-weight ropes with greater safety have replaced this type of rope. The butterfly coil is a method of carrying a rope used by climbers where the rope remains attached to the climber and ready to be uncoiled at short notice.
Another method of carrying a rope is the alpine coil. Rope is an aerial acrobatics circus skill, where a performer makes artistic figures on a vertical suspended rope. Tricks performed on the rope are, for example, drops and hangs, they must be strong. See Corde lisse; the use of ropes for hunting, fastening, carrying and climbing dates back to prehistoric times. It is that the earliest "ropes" were occurring lengths of plant fibre, such as vines, followed soon by the first attempts at twisting and braiding these strands together to form the first proper ropes in the modern sense of the word. Impressions of cordage found on fired
Peru
Peru the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, in the west by the Pacific Ocean. Peru is a megadiverse country with habitats ranging from the arid plains of the Pacific coastal region in the west to the peaks of the Andes mountains vertically extending from the north to the southeast of the country to the tropical Amazon Basin rainforest in the east with the Amazon river. Peruvian territory was home to several ancient cultures. Ranging from the Norte Chico civilization in the 32nd century BC, the oldest civilization in the Americas and one of the five cradles of civilization, to the Inca Empire, the largest state in pre-Columbian America, the territory now including Peru has one of the longest histories of civilization of any country, tracing its heritage back to the 4th millennia BCE; the Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century and established a viceroyalty that encompassed most of its South American colonies, with its capital in Lima.
Peru formally proclaimed independence in 1821, following the military campaigns of José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar, the decisive battle of Ayacucho, Peru secured independence in 1824. In the ensuing years, the country enjoyed relative economic and political stability, which ended shortly before the War of the Pacific with Chile. Throughout the 20th century, Peru endured armed territorial disputes, social unrest, internal conflicts, as well as periods of stability and economic upswing. Alberto Fujimori was elected to the presidency in 1990. Fujimori left the presidency in 2000 and was charged with human rights violations and imprisoned until his pardon by President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in 2017. After the president's regime, Fujimori's followers, called Fujimoristas, have caused political turmoil for any opposing faction in power causing Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to resign in March 2018; the sovereign state of Peru is a representative democratic republic divided into 25 regions. It is classified as an emerging market with a high level of human development and an upper middle income level with a poverty rate around 19 percent.
It is one of the region's most prosperous economies with an average growth rate of 5.9% and it has one of the world's fastest industrial growth rates at an average of 9.6%. Its main economic activities include mining, manufacturing and fishing; the country forms part of The Pacific Pumas, a political and economic grouping of countries along Latin America's Pacific coast that share common trends of positive growth, stable macroeconomic foundations, improved governance and an openness to global integration. Peru ranks high in social freedom. Peru has a population of 32 million, which includes Amerindians, Europeans and Asians; the main spoken language is Spanish, although a significant number of Peruvians speak Quechua or other native languages. This mixture of cultural traditions has resulted in a wide diversity of expressions in fields such as art, cuisine and music; the name of the country may be derived from Birú, the name of a local ruler who lived near the Bay of San Miguel, Panama City, in the early 16th century.
When his possessions were visited by Spanish explorers in 1522, they were the southernmost part of the New World yet known to Europeans. Thus, when Francisco Pizarro explored the regions farther south, they came to be designated Birú or Perú. An alternative history is provided by the contemporary writer Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, son of an Inca princess and a conquistador, he said the name Birú was that of a common Indian happened upon by the crew of a ship on an exploratory mission for governor Pedro Arias de Ávila, went on to relate more instances of misunderstandings due to the lack of a common language. The Spanish Crown gave the name legal status with the 1529 Capitulación de Toledo, which designated the newly encountered Inca Empire as the province of Peru. Under Spanish rule, the country adopted the denomination Viceroyalty of Peru, which became Republic of Peru after independence; the earliest evidences of human presence in Peruvian territory have been dated to 9,000 BC. Andean societies were based on agriculture, terracing.
Organization relied on reciprocity and redistribution because these societies had no notion of market or money. The oldest known complex society in Peru, the Norte Chico civilization, flourished along the coast of the Pacific Ocean between 3,000 and 1,800 BC; these early developments were followed by archaeological cultures that developed around the coastal and Andean regions throughout Peru. The Cupisnique culture which flourished from around 1000 to 200 BC along what is now Peru's Pacific Coast was an example of early pre-Incan culture; the Chavín culture that developed from 1500 to 300 BC was more of a religious than a political phenomenon, with their religious centre in Chavín de Huantar. After the decline of the Chavin culture around the beginning of the 1st century AD, a series of localized and specialized cultures rose and fell
Beadwork
Beadwork is the art or craft of attaching beads to one another by stringing them with a sewing needle or beading needle and thread or thin wire, or sewing them to cloth. Beads come in a variety of materials and sizes. Beads are used to create jewelry or other articles of personal adornment. Beadwork techniques are broadly divided into loom and off-loom weaving, bead embroidery, bead crochet, bead knitting, bead tatting. Beads, made of durable materials, survive in the archaeological record appearing with the advent of modern man, Homo sapiens. Beads are used for religious purposes, as good luck talismans, for barter, as curative agents. Modern beadwork is used as a creative hobby to create jewelry, coasters, plus dozens of other crafts, copies of paintings. Beads are available in many different designs, colors and materials, allowing much variation among bead artisans and projects. Simple projects can be created in less than an hour by novice beaders, while complex beadwork may take weeks of meticulous work with specialized tools and equipment.
Many free patterns and tutorials can be found in Internet. Faience is a mixture of powdered clays and lime and silica sand; this is molded around a small stick or bit of straw. It is ready to be fired into a bead; as the bead heats up, the soda and lime melt into glass that incorporates and covers the clay. The result is a hard bead covered in bluish glass; this process was discovered first in Mesopotamia and imported to ancient Egypt. However, it was the Egyptians. Since before the 1st dynasty of Narmer to the last dynasty of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and to the present day, faience beads have been made in the same way; these beads predate glass beads and were a forerunner of glass making. If a beadmaker was a little short of clay and had a little extra lime and the fire is hotter than usual, the mixture will become glass. In fact some early tubular faience beads are clayish at pure glass at the other end; the beads weren't fired evenly. The uneven beads were noticed early on, this led to experimentation at first.
It took a long time for new ideas to be accepted in a agricultural society. One of the first variations to take hold was to color the faience beads by adding metallic salts. By the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty, faience making and glass making had become two separate crafts. Faience beads were so common because they were cheaper and less labor-intensive to make than stone beads. Aside from personal use and daily wear they were used to create beaded netting to cover mummies. Most of the archaeological specimens come from burials; as early as the Old Kingdom, Egyptian artisans fashioned images of gods and mortals wearing broad collars made of molded tubular and teardrop beads. These beaded collars may have been derived from floral prototypes. In antiquity the collar was called a wesekh "the broad one". In the Americas, the Cherokee used bead work to tell stories, they told them by the patterns in the beads. They used dried berries, gray Indian corn, bones, claws, or sometimes sea shells when they traded with coastal tribes.
3D beading uses the techniques of bead weaving, which can be further divided into right angle weave and peyote stitch. Many 3D beading patterns are done in right angle weave, but sometimes both techniques are combined in the same piece. Both stitches are done using either fishing nylon thread. Fishing line lends itself better to right angle weave because it is stiffer than nylon thread, so it holds the beads in a tighter arrangement and does not break when tugged upon. Nylon thread is more suited to peyote stitch because it is softer and more pliable than fishing line, which permits the beads of the stitch to sit straight without undue tension bending the arrangement out of place. Two needle right angle weave is done using both ends of the fishing line, in which beads are strung in repeated circular arrangements, the fishing line is pulled tight after each bead circle is made. Single has become the norm. Peyote stitch is stitched using only one end of the nylon thread; the other end of the string is left dangling at the beginning of the piece, while the first end of the thread progresses through the stitch.
In peyote stitch, beads are woven into the piece in a similar fashion to knitting or cross stitching. In fact, it is not uncommon for cross stitch patterns to be beaded in peyote stitch technique. Peyote stitch patterns are easy to depict diagrammatically because they are stitched flat. Right angle weave lends itself better to 3D beading, but peyote stitch offers the advantage of allowing the beads to be more knit, sometimes necessary to portray an object properly in three dimensions. Beadwork in Europe has a history dating back millennia to a time when shells and animal bones were used as beads in necklaces. Glass beads were being made in Murano by the end of the 14th century. French beaded flowers were being made as early as the 16th century, lampwork glass was invented in the 18th century. Seed beads began to be used for embroidery and numerous off-loom techniques. Beadwork is a Native American art form which evolved to use glass beads imported from Europe and Asia. Glass beads have been in use for five centuries in the Americas.
Today a wide range of beading styles flourish. Alongside the widespread popularity of glass beads, bead artists continue incorporating nat
Embroidery
Embroidery is the craft of decorating fabric or other materials using a needle to apply thread or yarn. Embroidery may incorporate other materials such as pearls, beads and sequins. In modern days, embroidery is seen on caps, coats, dress shirts, dresses and golf shirts. Embroidery is available with a wide variety of yarn color; some of the basic techniques or stitches of the earliest embroidery are chain stitch, buttonhole or blanket stitch, running stitch, satin stitch, cross stitch. Those stitches remain the fundamental techniques of hand embroidery today; the process used to tailor, patch and reinforce cloth fostered the development of sewing techniques, the decorative possibilities of sewing led to the art of embroidery. Indeed, the remarkable stability of basic embroidery stitches has been noted: It is a striking fact that in the development of embroidery... There are no changes of materials or techniques which can be felt or interpreted as advances from a primitive to a more refined stage.
On the other hand, we find in early works a technical accomplishment and high standard of craftsmanship attained in times. The art of embroidery has been found worldwide and several early examples have been found. Works in China have been dated to the Warring States period. In a garment from Migration period Sweden 300–700 AD, the edges of bands of trimming are reinforced with running stitch, back stitch, stem stitch, tailor's buttonhole stitch, whip-stitching, but it is uncertain whether this work reinforced the seams or should be interpreted as decorative embroidery. Ancient Greek mythology has credited the goddess Athena with passing down the art of embroidery along with weaving, leading to the famed competition between herself and the mortal Arachne. Depending on time and materials available, embroidery could be the domain of a few experts or a widespread, popular technique; this flexibility led from the royal to the mundane. Elaborately embroidered clothing, religious objects, household items were seen as a mark of wealth and status, as in the case of Opus Anglicanum, a technique used by professional workshops and guilds in medieval England.
In 18th-century England and its colonies, samplers employing fine silks were produced by the daughters of wealthy families. Embroidery was a skill marking a girl's path into womanhood as well as conveying rank and social standing. Conversely, embroidery is a folk art, using materials that were accessible to nonprofessionals. Examples include Hardanger from Norway, Merezhka from Ukraine, Mountmellick embroidery from Ireland, Nakshi kantha from Bangladesh and West Bengal, Brazilian embroidery. Many techniques had a practical use such as Sashiko from Japan, used as a way to reinforce clothing. Embroidery was an important art in the Medieval Islamic world; the 17th-century Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi called it the "craft of the two hands". Because embroidery was a sign of high social status in Muslim societies, it became popular. In cities such as Damascus and Istanbul, embroidery was visible on handkerchiefs, flags, shoes, tunics, horse trappings, sheaths, covers, on leather belts. Craftsmen embroidered items with silver thread.
Embroidery cottage industries, some employing over 800 people, grew to supply these items. In the 16th century, in the reign of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, his chronicler Abu al-Fazl ibn Mubarak wrote in the famous Ain-i-Akbari: "His majesty pays much attention to various stuffs; the imperial workshops in the towns of Lahore, Agra and Ahmedabad turn out many masterpieces of workmanship in fabrics, the figures and patterns and variety of fashions which now prevail astonish the most experienced travelers. Taste for fine material has since become general, the drapery of embroidered fabrics used at feasts surpasses every description." The development of machine embroidery and its mass production came about in stages in the Industrial Revolution. The first embroidery machine was the Hand-Embroidery Machine, invented in France in 1832 by Josué Heilmann; the machine used a combination of machine looms and teams of women embroidering the textiles by hand. The manufacture of machine-made embroideries in St. Gallen in eastern Switzerland flourished in the latter half of the 19th century.
Embroidery can be classified according to what degree the design takes into account the nature of the base material and by the relationship of stitch placement to the fabric. The main categories are free or surface embroidery, counted embroidery, needlepoint or canvas work. In free or surface embroidery, designs are applied without regard to the weave of the underlying fabric. Examples include Japanese embroidery. Counted-thread embroidery patterns are created by making stitches over a predetermined number of threads in the foundation fabric. Counted-thread embroidery is more worked on an even-weave foundation fabric such as embroidery canvas, aida cloth, or specially woven cotton and linen fabrics. Examples include cross-stitch and some forms of blackwork embroidery. While similar to counted thread in regards to technique, in canvas work or needlepoint, threads are stitched through a fabric mesh to create a dense pattern that covers the foundation fabric. Examples of canvas work include bargello and Berlin wool work.
Embroidery can be classified by the similarity of appearance. In drawn thr
