Armenian Embroidery

The stitching technique employed in this large cover is called detached interlacing. Using a needle , the stitcher first sets up scaffolding warps on the surface of the ground fabric and then darns wefts into the warps, creating separate layers of plain weave fabric that float over the surface of the ground fabric. A distinguishing characteristic of this technique is that the embroidery thread shows on the reverse only as a series of tiny stitches marking the points where the scaffolding threads are anchored to the ground fabric at the edges of the motifs. The design features a large concentric medallion and a field both containing small bursting circles. The ground of coarse indigo is comprised of smaller panels stitched together prior to the application of the design.