Embroidery in progress

I’ve recently begun work on a project that will probably take a year to complete. At least. Briefly put, I’ll be creating (and writing about) a Norwegian national costume, known as a Bunad.

Expect a number of future posts concerning the history, construction, and use of Norwegian folkedrakt (folk dress) and bunader (bunads). Today, however, we’re just getting started.

If you’re planning a project that requires 120 hours of hand embroidery, you should first make sure you actually enjoy embroidering things. You don’t have to be good at embroidery, since you’re going to improve over time: you just have to like it well enough to keep going.

So in the interest of creating a small prøvelapp or practice run, and as a birthday gift to my mother, I decided to embroider a purse, adapting my pattern from the classic Gamle Valdresbunad, which is one of the official bunader from the Valdres region in Norway.

My makeshift purse started out humbly, just a bundle of threads and a leftover piece of camel hair coating, but then I found on Ebay a truly gorgeous fin de siècle sterling silver frame, and suddenly my practice run had the potential to become something real.

After spending a few weeks teaching myself crewel embroidery, I finally ended up with a finished object. It’s not perfect, and it’s certainly not authentically Norwegian, but my mom loves it, and it’s a place to start. And now I think I’m ready to move forward with Project Bunad.

A bunad purse embroidered in the “Gamle Valdresbunad” style.