Smøyg: Pattern Darning from Norway

Smøyg: Pattern Darning from Norway

By Yvette Stanton:

From the award-winning embroiderer who introduced you to some of the world’s most exquisite forms of traditional embroidery, comes a how-to guide full of colourful images and enticing projects to help you discover the beauty of Norwegian pattern darning. Pattern darning is a simple counted embroidery technique using basic running stitch, and beginners through to experienced stitchers will find much to delight in this book. My books sometimes are on quite complicated styles of embroidery. This one is not! It’s all about running stitch, the most simple of stitches.

I first saw smøyg while researching my book on early-style Hardanger embroidery. Hardanger is the main embroidery featured on the Hardanger bunad (or folk dress). Smøyg is one of the styles of embroidery featured on bunads from Telemark. However, as I researched further, I found it in more and more places, and on more and more textiles. And so began a journey into a new world of colourful counted running stitch, of which I have loved every minute!

I travelled to Norway again, to this time research smøyg, and was enthusiastically received by museum curators and smøyg stitchers alike. Smøyg is used on folk dress, which Norwegians still wear for special occasions, and until now there has been no book published specifically on smøyg. This is a book that many have been waiting for!