Sichuan Embroidery

Sichuan Embroidery is one of the four major embroideries in China. It was first made in the western Sichuan Plain.

The ancient western Sichuan Plain was an area thriving in mulberry planting and silkworm－breeding. The embroidery business is quite flourishing among the folks here. By the Western Han Dynasty over 2,000 years ago, Sichuan Embroidery business had formed a considerable scale and shown perfect craftsmanship. Yang Xiong, one of the famous writers at that time, hailed the skills in making the Sichuan embroidery. From his “Prose on Chengdu”, you can imagine the vivid scene of that period in the central Sichuan where every village planted mulberries and breed silkworms while every family wove cloth and made embroideries.

The carp is a traditional pattern in Sichuan embroidery. Such a carp will take a whole month of an embroidery worker, who will embroider over 210,000 stitches, i.e. averagely 15 stitches a minute.

Well, how is a Sichuan embroidery work turned out？ Firstly, the designers supply a pattern draft. Secondly, the draft is copied on the silks and satins. Thirdly, the embroidery craftsmen choose silk threads of different colors and the stitching techniques according to the pattern to be embroidered. Embroidery requires fine workmanship. It will take several months or even years to finish an embroidery work. During such a long work time, the embroidery workers must always concentrate their attention on their work and be in a peaceful state of mind. Even a little carelessness will spoil the pattern and waste the previous efforts. An excellent embroidery craftsman must own good eyesight and skilful hands. And above all, he must have artistic attainments and good appreciation. He must be able to understand correctly the meaning and interests of the patterns. So in fact it is a kind of artistic creation to complete an embroidery article.