Marta Cucchia and the Giuditta Brozzetti Weaving Studio

Sometimes people do things that make you absolutely marvel at their talent. Marta Cucchia of the Giuditta Brozzetti Weaving Studio in Perugia is one of those people who does this to me.

Everything Marta makes is amazing. I've told you a little about her and the Giuditta Brozzetti Weaving Studio before. I had the enormous good fortune of visiting them in 2009.

Back then Marta had recently finished a piece she had been studying and figuring out from a Pintoricchio painting.

She explained how she was fascinated by the designs on the fabric in the painting and thought to challenge herself by recreating the piece.

The piece is quite long and each line is a different pattern!

The inspiration for this work is the cloth that the Baby Jesus is wrapped in in this Pintoricchio painting which can be found in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria museum in Perugia.

I am still in awe of Marta's talent five years later. She continues to do amazing work and is always finding new things to challenge herself with. If you ever find yourself in Perugia, you should not miss a trip to the Giuditta Brozzetti Weaving Studio, they have guided tours (in English too!).

Thanks to Vima for the use of her photos!

Delicious Umbrian Embroidery

The very best gifts are those that are unexpected. Last week a courier arrived with a package from Italy and I had no idea what it could be. The little girl in me took over as soon as I'd signed for it and I sat down right there on the stairs and ripped open the envelope. Inside was truly a wonder to behold and I sat there for the better part of an hour (probably with my mouth open the whole time).

As regular readers will know, I absolutely LOVE the textured Italian embroideries and this is a stunning example. An Umbrian Embroidery pillow cover in amazing condition!

This very fortunate find was discovered by Bianca Rosa Bellomo of the Associazione I Merletti di Antonilla Cantelli in Bologna. She told me that she found it at a stall in the market at an excellent price. The lady running the stall told her that it came from an rich estate in the hills which was vacated. It has certainly been well looked after!

In the book Ricami della Bell'Epoca I found two photos of a table cover with the same design (repeated seven times!). The caption says that that piece dates to the 1930s. I wonder how old the one I have is?

This book says that pieces of this kind of embroidery can be found in the collections of the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York, the Museo Storico Didattico della Tappezzeria di Bologna and the Fondazione Ranieri in Perugia.

Detail of my pillow cover.

Four delightful knotted tassels, one at each corner of the pillow cover. Inside the head of each one appears to be a wooden bead.

Check out these exquisite buttons which run along the top edge to enclose a pillow! They are slipped through buttonhole loops to close.

Insertion stitching used on three sides to join the front and back together. See how the edging matches? The back has three sets of blanket stitches repeating all the way around and the front is bordered by chain stitching. The stitching matches along the edge of the insertion stitches.

Detail of my pillow cover.

Detail of my pillow cover.

Detail of my pillow cover.

Detail of my pillow cover.

I can study the back side of the embroidery too!

I just happen to have the perfect size pillow to put in it and now it sits on my bed so I can see it every time I walk into my room!

A tremendous and heartfelt thank you to Bianca Rosa for this most precious of gifts!

Veronese Crochet Lace - prizewinner

Every year I long to attend (but never have) the Hand Embroidery and Weaving Exhibition at Valtopina in Perugia. I search the internet for reports from attendees and drool over photos posted on blogs and websites. The region of Umbria is rich in embroidery history and there are so many interesting local techniques. One day I really must attend, if for no other reason than to satisfy my longing to do so.

Along with the various exhibitions at the show, there is always an open competition and this year's theme was Green Monuments of Umbria - the trees. This year, participants were required to demonstrate the development of their ideas for the pattern on paper and then to produce a tablecloth big enough for six settings (hemmed measurement: 140 cm x 160 cm) along with matching napkins (hemmed measurement: 40 cm x 40 cm) with their embroidery or lace ideas applied.

The category of lace was split by two winners using the techniques of Veronese Crochet Lace and a needle lace from the Apuglia region called Punto Maglie.

I wrote to Anna Castagnetti of Ricami a Fili Tesi to congratulate her and asked if she would share some details on the prize-winning piece of Veronese Crochet Lace she made together with Donatella Granzarolo. Here is what she said:

"Donatella made all the Veronese Crochet Lace pieces and I joined them together with needle lace bars covered in buttonhole stitch, after having prepared the holes in the fabric. Each tree is made up of eight pieces (three leaves equal one piece) and the trunk. At the four corners of each insertion there are a further four pieces (the sets of leaves). The insertions are finished around the edges with a cording or overcast stitch surrounded by a row of four sided stitch. Threads used were: DMC Cordonnet Special no. 80 for the buttonhole bars; Anchor Lace no. 20 bobbin lace thread for the Veronese Crochet Lace; Crochet Cotton no. 60 for the rest. I can't tell you how much time it took to make it all, we worked together which doubles the execution time and as we live 50 km away from each other, additional time was required for travel."

Below is a picture of one of the inserts:

Congratulations Anna and Donatella! Thank you for sharing the details of this piece with us and for the great photo!

Umbrian Embroidery Revisited - Part One

Way back in this post, I promised to let you know how my experiments with Umbrian Embroidery went. Recently I finally had some time to dedicate to some more experiments. As usual with my experiments, I learned more about what I shouldn't do than what I should, but I show them to you in the spirit of learning.

Instead of using an evenweave fabric, I wanted a more rustic look and chose some lightweight undyed hemp fabric. I made sure to finish the edges on the serger before washing it, and after ironing the whole yard, I discovered that it had not been cut very evenly so I spent quite a bit of time withdrawing threads on the two sides that did not have a selvedge and then serging those two sides again for a more true idea of how much fabric I had (which was a yard in the end). I really like the look and feel of the hemp fabric.

Ok, so now having squared-off my fabric I had some scraps to experiment on. I already knew that I wanted to use the varigated Anchor pearl cotton, 1355 which is a green/blue/yellow combination. But which weight? No. 5 or No. 8?

While I really like the raised texture of the no. 5, it is clearly too heavy to use on this fabric, so no. 8 it is. This little motif uses the Satin stitch, Stem stitch and the Ricciolino stitch which characterizes Umbrian Embroidery.

Off we go! I chose a motif from Giuseppa Federici's lovely book: Punto Umbro o Punto Sorbello which I got last year at the Italia Invita Forum in Parma. I have been dying to try some of the beautiful things in this book.

Giusy has written several books on different Italian needlework techniques and she really knows how to lay out a technical manual. The photos are clear and close-up and there are lots and lots of interesting and attractive patterns to try, all with photos of the items stitched up so you know what the end result will be.

I chose one of the simpler Umbrian Embroidery motifs, transfered the pattern onto the hemp fabric and went to work. It stitches up quickly and while I love tone-on-tone, this thread produces an interesting effect too.

This is one corner of the design which repeats in all four corners of a square:

Now, here's where I took a wrong turn... I am much more comfortable with counted thread embroidery and have a very hard time ignoring the weave of the fabric when doing free-style embroidery. Of course non-evenweave fabrics do not behave like evenweave fabrics and I should have calculated better before beginning my edging.

I really like the edging I experimented with before in this post. I thought I had it all figured out with regard to joining the insertion stitches when connecting two pieces of fabric, and so, when I stitched along my first side of the square of fabric, I assumed that if my stitches were done the same on all four sides, the results would be the same. I tried to execute the edging stitches every three ground fabric threads, thinking (erroneously) that everything would work out.

But warp and weft of this fabric are not the same. Can you see my difficulties? This piece will never match up with another one evenly and I even have five motifs on one side instead of four like the rest! All four sides are different.

Giusy says in her book that you need to set the pattern for the edging with your first piece so that you can easily join the others together. This makes sense, of course but how to go about it? Even if I fold my square over so that the two sides with four motifs are aligned, the motifs are not positioned correctly to be matched up.

This obviously cannot be done by counting ground threads (which I should have known) but rather with a ruler. If you have other ideas, please post them below! Now I will unpick the three edges which I don't like and attempt to make the new ones match the one edge that I do like which, ironically is the first edge I stitched. I should have paid more attention!!

I'll let you know how it goes, hopefully it won't take me so long to get back to you this time!

For those who will want to know:

• the Anchor thread came from http://sewandso.co.uk/
• the hemp fabric came from http://hempbasics.com/
• you can purchase Giusy's book directly from her (click on the link to send her an email) 

Romeyne Robert and Umbrian Embroidery - Part Three

If you are just joining us now, we started looking at Umbrian Embroidery here and continued here.

As previously stated the Marquess Romeyne Robert and Carolina Amari based the technique of Umbrian Embroidery on some antique Arab embroideries in the personal collection of the Countess Edith Bronson Rucellai of Florence.

I have been exploring my little book from the Associazione Culturale Femminile P.ES.CO. mentioned previously.

Correction: I did not interpret this stitch correctly! Please click here for the correct way to execute this lovely stitch!

One stitch I particularly like is the Punto Ricciolino [a literal translation would be: Little Curl Stitch]. I hope I am interpreting it correctly here:


This is a particularly attractive stitch for curved lines, giving a raised effect that I really like!


I'm doing a little sampler and will go over the other stitches in a future post.

Romeyne Robert and Umbrian Embroidery - Part One

Romeyne Robert and Umbrian Embroidery - Part Two

Romeyne Robert and Umbrian Embroidery - Part Four

Romeyne Robert and Umbrian Embroidery - Part Two

Let's continue on with our investigation of Umbrian Embroidery. If you're just joining us, please start with Part One.

The embroidery school/workshop founded and run by Romeyne Robert, Marquess Ranieri di Sorbello with the able management and outstanding input of Carolina Amari enjoyed ever-increasing success from 1904 until about 1933 or 1934 when both the school/workshop and the Arti Decorative Italiane shop in Perugia closed. It seems a number of factors were involved in the closures, most likely being the economic difficulties of the times and the advancing age of the two ladies.

After the closures, the Marquess Romeyne exhibited a collection of the very best pieces from the school/workshop in the Palazzo Sorbello and went on to collect antique pieces of embroidery and textiles.

Some students continued to make Umbrian Embroidery and later to teach it to others. In the late 1990s a renewed interest in this needlework brought about a revival which still continues today. There are now a few embroidery schools in Italy who teach Umbrian Embroidery.

While at the Italia Invita Forum of Lace and Embroidery in Parma in 2009, I picked up a little book from the Associazione Culturale Femminile P.ES.CO. [Women's Cultural Association P.ES.CO]:


A small format book of about 50 pages, it has technical instructions of most of the stitches which define the technique of Umbrian Embroidery including how to do some of the tassels. The text is in Italian but there are lots of clear diagrams. I've had a bit of success trying it out, though, like any other embroidery technique, you must practice in order to perfect stitch tension. Some of my attempts are quite sad so I would really like to take a course in this needlework - I am especially attracted to it's tone-on-tone texture.

At the EGA Seminar in San Francisco, the Italian ladies brought some pieces of Umbrian Embroidery from the P.ES.CO. Association with them. The pieces were spectacular!



The P.ES.CO. Association's goal is the "defense, conservation and dissemination of the artistic, artisan and cultural traditions of the area". They also promote the local art of Crochet Lace which we will talk about in another post. This is a group of astonishingly talented women. They keep a permanent exhibit at the Palazzo del Rondò in Tuoro sul Trasimeno in the province of Perugia if you happen to be passing by.

The book is available directly from their website if you are in Europe, otherwise to pay with PayPal, check out Tombolo Disegni (click on Libri/Books, then Libri/Ricamo, then Ricamo Italiani - send an email request to order).

Next time we'll have a look at some characteristic stitches of Umbrian Embroidery.

Romeyne Robert and Umbrian Embroidery - Part One

Romeyne Robert and Umbrian Embroidery - Part Three

Handwoven Fabrics from Perugia

Just outside the walls of the city of Perugia, there is a beautiful deconsecrated church called San Francesco delle Donne which houses a lot of history. Dating back to 1212, it is one of the oldest Franciscan churches in Italy. Today it is home to the Giuditta Brozzetti Workshop which makes the most beautiful handwoven textiles.


Giuditta Casini Brozzetti started her workshop in 1921. She hunted down all the local medieval and renaissance designs that she could find and employed the women of her area to weave household and church fabrics and woven furnishing products. She permitted her workers to weave their products at home so that they could also attend to their families while earning a living at the same time. For the most part, the items woven were worked on hand operated jacquard looms. Patterns were hammered manually using a system of wooden pegs to make punched cards. With the help of the artist Bruno da Osimo, who prepared many of the patterns used by her workshop, Giuditta Brozzetti produced many beautiful items.

Some sketches for Perugian fabric by Bruno da Osimo from the book: L'Officina di Bruno da Osimo:


The workshop became much appreciated and admired and before the Second World War its products were even exported to the US.


The tradition of the Giuditta Brozzetti workshop has been passed down by now four generations and today the workshop calls the church San Francesco delle Donne its home. Marta Cucchia is the youngest descendant who now creates her own designs there.

Here Marta and Vima deMarchi Micheli hold up a magnificent runner woven with silk:


Marta was kind enough to give us a guided tour in May of 2009, giving us demonstrations of weaving and pattern punching as well as letting us fondle all the beautiful products on display.


The Giuditta Brozzetti workshop teaches weaving, embroidery, lacemaking and gives guided tours of the church. It should not be missed if you spend any time in Perugia!

For more photos and enthusiastic reviews, go here, here, here and here!