Beaded Leather Embroidery

I thought I would show you a bit of a behind the scenes for one of my favorite art forms.  Leather embroidery is the art (or craft) of stitching very small beads called seed beads onto leather by hand.  Patterns must be figured out, gemstones set, and you must have strong hands!  Getting a needle through leather can sometimes be a real pain. I'm nursing a couple of needle pokes now actually.  I'm working on a new project called "Sun Spots".  Here you can see I'm reusing car leather samples which would have been tossed in the trash had they not been "rescued" by my father.  (Three "R"s, right? :D)

I've been working on it for a couple of days now and I'm happy with the results so far. Here is another piece of mine all finished called "Native Earth" shown below.

Most of my embroidery pieces are at the Nature Shop in Rowe Woods in Milford, Ohio if you would like to see them in person.  I'll also have "Sun Spots" and much more at our show coming up in September, Old West Festival.

A Bit of History



Beaded embroidery is very beautiful, and also very period.  Some of the first known pieces of beaded embroidery were done in the 12th century on German church vestments. This medieval style of embroidery was usually sketched onto parchment, then embroidered, and then the beaded vellum would be used as an appliqué, and applied to the fabric. The embroidery was usually done in laid work, meaning that the beads were strung onto one thread, laid on the design in the desired manner, and then couched into place with a second needle and thread.

By Giuliana di Benedetto Falconieri

Embroidery and most other fiber and needlework arts are believed to originate in the Orient and Middle East. Primitive humankind quickly found that the stitches used to join animal skins together could also be used for embellishment. In 1964, a Cro-Magnon hunter’s fossilized remains, 30,000B.C., was found at a dig in Sungir near Vladimir, Russia. His fur clothing, boots and hat were heavily decorated with hand stitched horizontal rows of ivory beads - bead embroidery? You bet!

Chinese bead embroidery in Siberia, 5000 and 6000B.C., include elaborately drilled shells stitched with decorative designs onto animal hides. Mosaics of Byzantium, 500A.D., depict embroidery of clothing with silk thread, precious stones and pearls. It is possible the Chinese thread embroidery from 3500B.C. was the origin of thread embroidery as we know it today.

http://www.beadwrangler.com/samplers/embroidery1/embroidery_history.htm