TRAVELLER BAG WITH BEDOUIN EMBROIDERY

This is the last one of the big bags I made some time ago. The embroidery is done on blue background fabric, which is unusual, mostly Bedouin women embroider on black or dark brown fabric, many times on the already sewn dresses.

With this embroidery I have a little story to tell. Two or three years ago I was at the flea market in Tel Aviv-Yafo and I saw a beautiful, used Bedouin dress hanging outside a shop. The embroidery was impeccable, my eyes got big and I took a deep breath. I was wondering why a black coat was draped over the dress, I could see only the front. Hiding my excitement I asked the Arab seller, who was sitting near the door, to take down the coat and show me the whole dress. He did, and would you believe it - half of the back of the dress was cut off - from the waist to the bottom, right through the embroidery! Very often the Arabs sell vintage Bedouin embroidery in pieces, they cut up the worn dresses, to make a bit more money. In this case I could really not understand why they did it - the dress was indeed too beautiful and too perfect to destroy it like this and would have been worth much more as a whole dress. Anyway, because of the damage done, I could bargain and buy it for a reasonable price.

I made this traveler bag from it and it is unknown to me where it is today. I hope the woman who liked it and took it away with her enjoys its beauty, uses it with pleasure and cares for it! I also made a smaller version from the same embroidery, I posted a picture of it in March, and I still have some of it left. The bag was created with the embroidered pieces and with decorator fabric. There is a lot of additional embroidery and it is fully lined, padded, and heavily quilted with metallic thread. All kinds of lovely embellishments like beads, buttons, spirals made from gold colored wire and from couched yarn, ribbons, and shishas (little mirrors, from Nepal) are added.

I am lucky to have a beautiful and completely intact black embroidered Bedouin dress, with triangle sleeves, which I bought from another Arab seller in Yafo, and I will show it in my next post.