Crewel Embroidery

Crewel embroidery is a popular form of embroidery that is at least thousand years old. Though, the origin of this art is not known, it is believed to have originated from the east of Egypt, France and Rome. In India, crewel art has always been in huge demand and is also gaining importance in the international markets as well. It is one of the most used forms of embroidery today primarily because of its elegant essence and colorful effects.

 

Crewel is mainly a form of surface embroidery in which patterns are lightly sketched onto a fabric and then they are embroidered over. This embroidery is done with the help of wool and a variety of stitches used for creating complex and beautiful dimensional crewel embroidered patterns. Crewel work is generally used for embellishing curtains, pillows, cushions and wall hangings.

This art of embroidery is mainly done on a woven fabric mainly on cotton and linen. But over the years, it is also done on other fabrics like cotton velvet, silk organza, jute and net fabric. The stitches of the crewel embroidery is very heavy and for that reason the fabric used needs to be very strong. Special type of needles like chenille needles are required to make beautiful and elegant crewel designs. A variety of stitching styles like stem stitch, satin stitch, seed stitch, Romanian stitch, etc are used to create the textured and colorful effects needed on the whole design. Although crewel embroidery work is certainly not limited to these stitches only.