The times, when the Bulgarian woman embroidered gloomy pictures using vague and handwritten schemes, are gone. Today, tapestry is developing rapidly. Thanks to the technological progress and the Internet, we have broadened our horizons, Valentina Georgieva who is one of the organizers of the National Meetings of Tapestry Weavers held each year in different Bulgarian cities told Radio Bulgaria. This year, over 130 people gathered in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. The number of people attending this annual event has increased over the years. Many children and men are also interested in this beautiful hobby.

Each year we attend several tapestry competitions, Yana Tancheva explains. This year, tapestry depicting images created by certain designers was presented at one of the competitions. Tapestry of paintings of world famous artists was the theme of the second competition and the third event was dedicated to applied embroidery.

At these meeting we dare doing things we never did in the past. Every participant finds his own style – from science fiction characters to primitive designs.

The early American settlers conveyed their heritage in embroidery through primitives in the form of symbols, figures, numbers and letters of alphabet.

This is a relatively new trend in Bulgaria and it is still difficult to perceive, because it looks naïve, but there is a lot of sense and meaning in primitive tapestry and a sense of coziness and house atmosphere is created, Elena Guncheva told Radio Bulgaria. Sampler tapestry is a different type of tapestry using combination of different stitches and beads. It enables people to create and express themselves. The Bulgarian tapestry weavers have already started to feel the beauty of this type of embroidery. 

The modern tapestry weavers work with all types of canvases, tapestry sets containing ribbons, stones and beads. They use different types of embroidery techniques practiced over the years.

However, we always appreciate the beauty. The beautiful and complicated embroideries are an incentive for more and more people to overcome the worry of trying new techniques. Now, the so-called multi-color tapestry is very popular, Valentina Georgieva notes.

This is a completely new trend in tapestry art, Yana Tancheva adds. Several companies manufacture such designs, usually based on reproductions of famous paintings. What is different in this trend is that it uses nearly 200 different colors and the tapestry schemes are difficult. But eventually, they become a reproduction of a beautiful medieval painting.

Mandala tapestry is very recognizable in the whole variety of tapestry art.

Mandala tapestry is a separate trend in the world of embroidery. It is dedicated to almost all beautiful cities and countries. They are a combination of the splendor of many different stitches that create the volume of the embroidery using different beads, crystals, silk hand-dyed threads, metallized threads, etc., Valya Georgieva told Radio Bulgaria details on the subtleties of this type of embroidery

Fortunately, the tapestry weavers can do embroidery based on high-quality author’s works of Bulgarian designers.

Their number is not that high, but we hope that it will increase in the future, Yana Tancheva says. They mainly work with Bulgarian landscapes and paintings of Bulgarian artists which cannot happen in foreign companies. Embroidery of traditional Bulgarian patterns with particular stitches is another trend in tapestry.

They are all recognizable as images and style and I am happy that these Bulgarian companies mainly use traditional Bulgarian motifs and find supporters.

Protecting the labor of the Bulgarian designers is a serious problem, because in the Internet era everyone can find a tapestry scheme and we are trying to protect the Bulgarian designers and stand against the theft of their tapestry schemes, Yana explains.

For us, tapestry is great love, passion, fire and madness. Thanks to tapestry, people who didn’t know each other before find their common hobby, become good friends, Valentina adds.

For me, tapestry is an important part of my life. We put our soul, heart and thought into it, Elena says.

Each year, the bar rises higher and higher. We are trying to overleap ourselves when we see the new trends and techniques in tapestry. This is a beautiful and shared craze, Yana Tancheva contends.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov