Ribbon galore!

By Rutger Prommenschenckel

And the category is: Ribbon galore

A Sunday I believe it was. My friends and I were walking on the shores of the beautiful Ortaköy, in the mystical city of Istanbul. That’s where something caught my eye on a vintage street market. It was a ribbon embroidered tablecloth with a crochet trim. It was awfully inspiring to me. The old Turkish lady showed to me proud her hard labour, and unfolded some of her tablecloths. The various ribbon embroidery patterns and colours made me want to buy them all. But ok, I had to stay realistic…. How on earth could I carry all of them home to Amsterdam? So lets focus, be reasonable, and just buy 1. The prettiest one!

Birth of a hand embroidered sweater

This is where the ribbon embroidery technique came to my attention. And in a split second, while I was bargaining for the price, I saw the motives on a sweater.

A women’s sweater with floral patterns hand embroidered with the ribbon embroidery technique.  So this exact mark in time and place made me come up with the start of a hand embroidered ‘Ribbon Flower’ collection. A collection of fun women’s pullovers.

A special collaboration with Haruco-vert

Together with a very special collective, wereldwijven.info, the ‘Ribbon Flower’ collection by Haruco-vert became more then just a collection of unique and special women’s sweaters. The collective stimulates women from all over the globe, which for various reasons ended up in the Netherlands, to communicate together through their handwork skills. ‘Wereldwijven’ teaches these women that by mastering their handwork techniques they have an artisanal skill. A skill which they could earn money with.

An artisanal voice

Through the artisanal craftsmanship done by the ‘Wereldwijven’, the ‘Ribbon Flower’ collection got its voice; a social voice.  A voice of many skilled women that came from all over the world and ended up talking and teaching each other their language through embroidery. I hope that these unique hand embroidered women’s sweaters are one of many items we can show the world through a beautiful alliance with this unique enterprise.

These items are no longer in our shop, if you are interested please contact us!