Culture Vulture Challenge - Traditional Bulgarian Embroidery

Embroidery was one of my mom's hobbies together with knitting and crocheting. As a young girl she learned it from her mother and since it was traditional to pass from generation to generation she tried to teach me too. Sadly I was not interested so much and with regret I cannot present any of my own.

I will always remember her doing something - knitting a jumper or crocheting something that can be used as decoration. So were all of the embroidery staff. Funny enough they were everywhere - my mother was covering the tables, radio or tv set, putting them on every piece of furniture. They really were all over the place.

The pictures I would like to show you are some of her works I kept since she passed away.

These are traditional Bulgarian patterns. In the past the women were using not just their imagination but all the figures got some symbolic meaning. In my mom's embroidery she used what was typical pattern that can be found in different crafts like weaving, carpet making. National costumes are lavishly embroidered too. The main colours used are red and white.

My mom liked to use more colours and to combine them in such way.

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The rose is quite popular in Bulgaria. In our Rose valley, the rose oil is produced and used in the fragrances. You may see on the label of your favourite perfume Bulgarian rose as an ingredient.

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Some blue colour in one of her works.

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And more stylized roses. This one took my mom quite some time to finish it and I think it was her favourite.

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Another example of traditional red and white combined with other colours.

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Bulgarian embroidery continue to inspire the designers to use it in their fasion collections.

This is just a small example from Valentino collection in 2015.

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What was surprising for me is the limited edition of Coca Cola with six colourful embroidery representing six regions of Bulgaria and the brand name written in Bulgarian language (we use Cyrilic alphabet). As a matter of fact the company used its name in Bulgarian language for the first time in 1965.

There is a big poster at the exit of my town Varna and I tried to photograph from the van this morning.
Please excuse the quality.

Of course the better image is below.

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This is the map of my country Bulgaria. It may be small, but got huge heritage of beautiful artwork.

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With this small contribution to Culture Vulture Challenge, initiated by @eroche I showed you a glimpse of Bulgarian culture with original works.

Thank you for reading, upvoting, resteeming and commenting.

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Much love
Neli