Hippystitch: Broderie Perse with York Embroiderers and Stitchers

My Broderie Perse Piece (detail)

I am a member of the York Embroiderers & Stitchers, who are a friendly group of stitch and textile enthusiasts of all levels of ability and experience. At our April meeting, Chris Small led an afternoon workshop in Broderie Perse. Broderie Perse (French for "Persian embroidery"), popular in the late 18th and 19th Centuries, is a style of appliqué which uses printed motifs from one fabric, usually flowers or birds, to create a design on a plain background fabric. Traditionally it used chintz fabric, which was expensive at the time. This fabric could be made to go further if the motifs were carefully cut out and applied to a plain background as a central motif or border and handstitched in place, such as on a quilt top.

We were provided with a vast array of fabrics to choose from...

Flowered Fabrics

together with a choice of background fabrics and some finished examples...

Broderie Perse Examples

and then it was time to get going. Here's an idea of what my starting fabrics looked like...

Fabrics I Chose for My Broderie Perse

I chose two flowery fabrics and intended to make a vase of flowers design on my mushroom coloured background fabric. As I cut out rather a lot of flowers I decided to use bondaweb to attach them to my background fabric and then machine stitch them in position as hand stitching would have taken a lot of time and the fabrics were likely to fray...