Chinese Silk Embroidery

Traditional Chinese silk embroidery has been around for almost 400 years, but the best part about this style of embroidery is that the original features and specialties have not been lost even as the craft has traveled through continents and centuries to reach us. Creating traditional silk embroidery pieces requires a lot of time and effort. On top of this, it also demands a certain level of expertise in the craft from the embroiderer.

To begin with, the embroiderer has to split the pure silk embroidery floss that she plans to use for her embroidery. One strand of coarse floss generally contains a hundred and twenty eight thin strands of silk. Depending upon the design that she wants to make, the embroider splits the floss into thinner strands. This split strand might be further joined with other equally thin strands to get the exact shade or color that the embroidery requires. The best kinds of fabric for creating silk embroidery are different varieties of pure silk only. However, nowadays, different fabrics, even synthetics are being used as a base for silk embroidery. Silk Embroidery is generally very fine and thus requires the use of very thin needles. The embroiderer may keep on repeating stitches in order to fill up a certain area or to provide a texture. Because of the intricacies involved in practicing the craft, creating silk embroidery pieces is a very time consuming job. Depending upon the design and pattern, a traditional silk embroidery piece can take an embroiderer or a group of embroiders anywhere between three to eighteen months to finish. Each artwork is unique in itself because every embroidery is made completely by hand.

Silk embroidery employs a variety of techniques, which can broadly be divided into traditional and random stitch embroidery techniques. Furthermore, this form of embroidery is also divided into four, based on the four kinds of schools or areas that they come from. Therefore we can find Sue, Xiang, Yue and Shu types of traditional Chinese silk embroidery, but you will need to be an expert to be able to differentiate between the four types. Apart from this, silk embroidery is also classified as single sided and double sided. Traditional silk embroidery has gained a foothold in the US market as adaptations of famous paintings and portraits are being made using this technique. However, due to the expensive nature of these pieces, they still have to gain popular appeal.