Huck Embroidery
By Adeline Panamaroff
Adeline, a freelance writer/proofreader, located in Edmonton, Alberta can be contacted at www.adelinepanamaroff.com for writing and marketing requests.
History: Huck embroidery is known by several different names such as huckaback embroidery, Swedish weaving (not to be confused with a type of loom weaving with the same name), Punto Oitinho in Brazil, and Yugoslavian weaving, among others. The history of the term huck could have several sources, one being a reference to the backing material that was historically used to embroider this style of stitching onto. This fabric tended to be a coarse, loosely woven fabric commonly used for bags that saw heavy use, such as backpacks. Another possible source for the name could have been the term huckster, which was used in many regions of northern Europe to refer to peddlers who sold their kitchen and fabric wares door to door. The term Swedish weaving was likely adopted because the oldest surviving specimens of this stitching method, dating back to the 1600s C.E., came from this region.
The stitches used in huck embroidery are similar to numerous other embroidery techniques. What makes this method of decorative stitching unique is that it is purely a surface embroidery, where the threads used do not appear at all on the back side of the piece being worked. This differentiates itself from the visually similar technique known as huck darning which does carry the thread through all layers of the piece being mended.
Huck embroidery maintained regional popularity in northern Europe throughout the 17th to 19th centuries. In 1696 C.E. The Swedish Queen, Hedvig Eleonora, showed her support and favour of this decorative embroidery by commissioning a full set of linens, tablecloths, napkins, and other household items to be woven and later stitched in the huck fashion, featuring the royal crest. This ensured that the production of huck needlework remained local within Sweden, due to its royal patronage, at least for a few more generations.
This technique travelled with Scandinavian settlers to North America and became quite popular during the early 20th century CE. It's technique made it quite easy for beginners to learn and provided a fast way to embellish tea towels with materials that were readily available for any socio-economic class. During this period of popularity many new designs and techniques for huck embroidery were published and distributed widely throughout North America and England. During this period of time dish towels, that were purely made to show off the stitcher’s skills, were at the height of popularity. Usually, a homemaker would have two sets of dishtowels, one purely for heavy use and another pristine set that was only brought out for special occasions and was never used to wipe up spills or to scrub counters.
With the advent of automatic dishwashers, the popularity of huck embroidery went on the decline once again. In the current era renewed interest has emerged for this embroidery method where patterns from the early 20th century C.E. have been republished and collected into larger volumes, in addition to new designs being created internationally by those who have taken up interest in preserving and expanding on this embroidery technique’s historic foundations.
Technique: Traditionally huck embroidery was worked on a very loosely woven backing fabric that has floats woven into the surface of the fabric into which the thread of the stitches could easily run through. Such fabrics today can include monks cloth, Aida cloth, popcorn fabric, huck toweling, waffle cloth, among others. All these fabrics have an obvious grid style weave where the top threads or floats are loose, which would allow for the easy passage of a threaded needle to pass through. The use of these loosely woven fabrics allows huck embroidery to be done purely on the surface of the backing fabric, without any of the stitches showing through onto the back side of the piece being worked. In order for the needle to pass effortlessly through the floats it is recommended that a blunt needle be used so that it will not catch on the threads of the floats as it passes through. The designs used for huck stitching tend to be on the larger scale so thicker threads are recommended such as pearl cotton, or for even larger pieces, worsted yarn. If embroidery floss is to be used it is recommended to use 6 to 12 strands of floss at a time.
The designs used in huck embroidery tend to be geometric and repetitive because the stitches used tend to flow in long bands along the fabric that is stitched. Traditionally using only four stitches such as the running stitch, open loop, closed loop, and step stitch, a line of stitches usually carries from one edge of the fabric to the opposite edge of the fabric in one continuous thread. Knots are also something not found in traditional huck embroidery. Instead, a person would usually measure out the length of thread needed for one row of stitches beforehand, start in the middle of the row to be stitched with only half the length of thread in use and would stitch out from the centre to one edge of the design. Once at one end of the row the thread would either be left trailing till the entire design was finished and then dealt with in whatever manner the edges of the fabric were to be finished or the stitcher would turn back along the path of stitches and double back over four or five stitches, then trimming off the remainder of the leftover thread. The other half of the row to be stitched would then be worked with the remaining half of thread worked in the opposite direction and repeated the method of securing the thread or leaving a loose tail as was desired. This method is used to reduce the amount of wear that a thread experiences while passing through the backing fabric as each stitch is worked. The choice of thread used all depends on the purpose of the project. Something that may see a lot of wash and wear would be worked with thicker thread such as pearl cotton or worsted yarn, while something that would be more decorative and not see much use could use something such as embroidery floss or metallic threads.
Innovation: Today huck embroidery is seeing much more popularity internationally both in Europe, North America, and in various areas of Asia. New stitches are being combined with the traditional huck technique which allows for more innovations and designs. Creativity has brought huck embroidery away from just being utilized on dish towels and can now be seen as embellishments on items such as aprons, children's bibs, card inserts, box lids, panels for pillowcases, afghans, or anything else that the stitcher can dream up. More and more designs are being published using elements from both huck embroidery and from other stitching sources that is bringing back to life this interesting and relaxing form of stitching.
Front view: Huck embroidery mixed with cross stitch / Designer unknown / Stitched by Adeline P.
Back view: Huck embroidery mixed with cross stitch / Designer unknown / Stitched by Adeline P.
This illustration (see images above) of huck embroidery is an example of the traditional mixed with different stitching techniques, in this case cross stitch. The use of cross stitch can be seen on the backside of the piece while the huck stitched areas of the design are not evident. This pillow cover was made by myself, Adeline Panamaroff. Credit for the design cannot be found as the kit it came from was disassembled years ago.
References and Further Reading:
Note: The links above lead to external content. ENG is not responsible for the content of external sites