A Really Big Work in Progress

Many of you will remember my trip last November to visit Mrs. Istvánné Szigethy and to learn more about her beautiful Hövej embroidery.  You might recall the pictures of the various pieces of needlework on display in her exhibit in the village of Hövej.  Her daughter shared with me recently that they have started to work on another room in the building and in this room will be displayed additional pieces of Mrs. Szigethy's embroidery.  I am so pleased that her work is being preserved for many more generations to admire!

Currently Mrs. Szigethy is working on a project to re-create an altar cloth that she stitched some years ago and gifted to a church in Hungary.  She recently started working on it and I thought you might be interested in seeing her progress.  I'm going to be sharing pictures with you that were taken by Mrs. Szigethy's daughter.

Before any stitching is done, the design needs to be traced onto the fabric.  As you can see, a very fine fabric, organza, is being used.  The fabric has been placed on top of the design and it is lightly being traced with a pencil.  Here Mrs. Szigethy is receiving some assistance in preparing her fabric for stitching:

Once the design has been traced on the fabric, the fabric is then mounted to a frame.  This is a rather large piece of fabric and so a large frame is going to be needed!  In this photo, you can see that Mrs. Szigethy has completed the bottom edging for this section.  She's now working on a more intricate design.  Each one of those open sections of the medallion will be filled with a different design. If you look closely, you can see the additional patterns, yet to be stitched, that are traced on this fabric.

Admiring her work!  Note how large that frame is...

I have fond memories of my visit with Mrs. Szigethy.  I know how important her needlework is to her and that she takes great pride in her work!

I will keep you updated on her progress as I receive more information.