Hello all,
This is a continuation of my last article on bodice insets from Hardanger and Hordaland. The image above is a bringeduk which I made for my friend Lorraine's Hardanger costume. I got the design from Heidi Fossnes' book 'Norges Bunader og Samiske Folkedrakter'.
When I was researching brustkluts online at the Norwegian digitalt Museum, I found more specimens executed in cross stitch than any other technique.
If you decide to copy any of these designs, remember that at least some of the colors may be faded, and feel free to adjust them accordingly.
I will now show some of the images which I found, with some attempt to sort them into categories.
3 Star designs
Many are of the basic design that I call three star, like the one above, from which the beaded designs were developed. Quite a few have the stars white, like the one above.
These are also sometimes executed on a red background, as, in fact, is true of all the various designs. This is especially effective when the stars are white or off white.
This is also executed with the stars in various other colors.
One Star designs
There are many variants of this basic design of star and diamonds. One is to emphasize one large star in the center of the design.
Starfield designs
The opposite design is also common, in which the stars are made smaller, and form an area design, generally enclosed by diamonds.
This design could have been striking. They took a band design and repeated it without making the necessary adjustments that would have made it a successful area design.
Area designs
There are other area designs which either do not include stars or in which the stars are deemphasized.
Band designs
Some designs are restricted to one band across the piece. Some of these cannot be expanded to area designs.
Cross Hatched designs
There is one group of designs which look as if they are imitating the bead netted breast pieces. These form quite a distinct group.
Modern and spot designs
There are a handful which do not easily fit into any of the above categories.
These first two show some influence from Morris designs.
Thank you for reading. I hope that you have found this to be interesting and informative.
I would strongly encourage you to take some of these designs and use them for any project which you would like.
Let us keep These beautiful expressions of Nordic and human culture alive.
Roman K
email: rkozakand@aol.com
Source Material
http://digitaltmuseum.no/