Back to origins...

Olá! Here in Portugal the weather is changing. The first days of Autumn brought us the rain... And working with wool yarn feels good again.

I'm really addicted to embroidery using cork fabric. Not only do I love the final look - vibrant colors make a beautiful contrast on the natural cork color - but I also enjoy the stitching a lot. I bring you a project that begun being a key ring and ended as a bag accessory... I've adapted a pattern from the book "Traditional Embroidery of Portugal". It was a very small pattern from Azores embroidery where small motifs predominate. I've augmented it many and many times, ending with a very different pattern. But the inspiration is still there...

The same motif - vey small and very big... 

Usually I use tracing paper to embroider on cork, as I explained in another post and this time I chose wool yarn. It's not easy to have the motif traced on cork...

Here you have the final result... Very beautiful to make a unique bag from a very simple one...

Cork fabric is an incredible material! Maybe an unlikely embroidery supply... But as far as I read, leather and leafs were the first "embroidery" supplies in the History of mankind... Maybe this is part of a "back to origins" movement :)