Handmade Embroidery - Craft Fair - Part 2 for MarketFriday

I'm continuing my Craft Fair series and posting photos I took a couple of weeks ago at the local craft market. This is the second part of my Craft fair. You can read about the first one here Made of Wood - Craft Fair - Part 1.

Today I'm going to post about handmade embroideries, table cloths, folk costumes and many more. So come with me to show you something specific to Transylvania and Romania.

Those tablecloths you see on both sides of the photo are called "Kalotaszegi varrottas" or "Kalotaszegi írásos". Kalotaszeg is the name of the place where this technique comes from. Kalotaszeg is a municipality which connects 34 villages in Transylvania. Kalotaszeg is the Hungarian name, (Țara Călatei in Romanian and The Land of Călata in English), has a significant Hungarian population, and it is a stronghold of old Transylvanian Hungarian folk traditions of which you'll see a part here in my presentation today.

This technique is called "Kalotaszegi írásos" (írásos means written in English) because the embroidery is continuous like writing. Above you can see a close-up photo of a kalotaszegi írásos tablecloth. This was done by hand, it's not easy at all, I can tell you that from experience. My grandmother was a huge fan of this embroidery technique and she had a room full of tablecloths, pillow cases, curtains and she had some on the wall as well. She loved to make them, this was her passion. I used to make some myself and still do sometimes.

This is a smaller one which costs around $38, unfortunately the canvas and yarn are very expensive. As about the colors used to create these beautiful things, I can tell you that red is the most popular, then comes blue, white and black, not necessarily in this order. Colors are never mixed!

This embroidery technique was used first to decorate shirts for women that were worn at religious events. After the second World War this habit disappeared and women started to use it to decorate pillow covers and make tablecloths. You can find it in most of the reformed christian churches. Now it's used almost fro everything. I've seen bags embroidered with this technique, book signs, book covers etc.

This is a traditional folk costume used by Hungarian from Transylvania. The red and black striped fabric with a white shirt and an embroidered apron, that's the standard. The embroidery of the apron car vary from region to region. I had one when I was in kindergarten and elementary school. My other grandmother made it for me by hand. She worked day and night so I can have it till the big day :) At the end of each school year there was a closing ceremony and each class had to make a performance, a dance, a short play, a music performance etc. That tradition still exists and Romanian, Hungarian and German always dress up in traditional folk costumes.

The book covers I was talking about above, you can see them on the table and hanged in the upper row. There's a kalotaszegi írásos tablecloth in the middle, behind the chair. Above it there is another one, embroidered with black and red, that's also specific to Hungarian from Transylvania, it's the same as the folk costume apron. next to it on the left there's another table cloth with colorful embroidery, that's specific to Hungary. it can be also found here in Transylvania but that's not part of the tradition. I like it, wanted to try it out but I don't think it's easy, won't be good at it.

This is a bag embroidered with the same technique. In Hungary you can find nice tablecloths with floral pattern on black.

Book signs and small table cloths also hand made with another technique. On them you can see blessings in Hungarian and German. At the bottom of the shelf there are handmade wool socks :) I guess that's just for fun or maybe people still use them in villages where it's very cold but that's just a guess. Wool is thick, you need big boots for those. When I was a teenager my grandmother taught me to knit them, it was fun :)

A colorful shirt for women, hand embroidered but can't tell you more about it. Might be traditional for some region of Romania.

I'm probably repeating myself but I love these fairs and I'm not the only one. At the time of the fair there were lots of tourist in town and this fair was in the center of the city, so it was inevitable. You should have seen their faces when they saw these beautiful things.

This is my entry to #MarketFriday hosted by our lovely Denise @dswigle.

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