How I designed the Kolimbari Diamonds cross stitch folk embroidery kit
In 2005, I made my first trip to Greece. I began in Crete, participating in a conversation workshop arranged by the Greek Ministry of Culure which preventively conserved 96 pieces of liturgical garments at the Gonia monastery in the small village of Kolimbari. Little did I know that I would come to love this island's striking folk textiles and eventually design the Cretan-inspired Kolimbari Diamonds cross stitch folk embroidery kit and pattern.
At the time, I was fairly new to the study of garment history of the ancient Greek and Roman world and my area of focus was on Byzantine liturgical vesture. I was aware of the ancient Minoan and Mycenaean garment traditions on Crete, but had only had a passing knowledge of the folk textiles traditions that had been a part of Crete's "recent" history, recent being a relative term when studying two millenia of garments and textiles!
I had seen photos of the lavishly embroidered hems of Cretan folk costume--impressive "stitchscapes" two- to three-feet high which were comprised of densely stitched flora, fauna, mermaids, vines and tendrils, worked mostly in Cretan stitch, an embroidery stitch that creates bold bands of color that twist and loop in an elaborate fashion to create stunning works of textile art. (photo below from Roderick Taylor's "Embroidery of the Greek Islands")
What I hadn't seen was the distinctive weaving traditions of Crete which I now began to see hanging in shops as I walked each morning along the main street of the village. These intrigued me with their complex geometric designs that felt paradoxically ancient and modern. I could envision them decorating a rough wooden table in the 17th century as well as a sleek mid-century modern table back in my home town of Portland, Oregon. While many of the textiles featured bands of repeating geometric motifs, others had a unique design with the center made up of dense diamonds, each diamond then filled with a scattering of ever smaller geometric motifs. From these intricate central diamonds radiated long lines of smaller, delicate diamonds which ended with even tinier motifs. It was this contrast of a dense center and the graceful, spare lines traveling outwards that was so visually compelling. It was interesting, complex, and felt very sophisticated due to its fascinating use of simple geometric motifs to make something so much more than the sum of its parts.
If the geometric motifs weren't fascinating enough, the colors were just as interesting: cobalt blues, bright reds, yellows, green, and then splashes of taupe or black which lended an elegant balance to the palette. Despite the bright colors, those neutral shades kept everything in check and reminded me of Michael Pollan's concept of "prospect and refuge" in his book "A Place of My Own" in which he suggests that architecture needs two seemingly opposite things: prospect--grand, beautiful views, or in the case of embroidery bright, bold colors--and, refuge--a sense of safety and peace, in the case of Cretan textiles, that balancing taupe shade.
The last detail that really made these embroideries unique was how the ends were finished with fringe which was made from the threads of the groundcloth. After the embroidery was worked, threads were removed and then knotted in small bundles to create a fringe, which had a sense of harmony with the overall aesthetic of these textiles. It was an almost "stairstep" feel--an intricate center moving out into graceful lines and finishing with that delicate fringe. I tried teaching myself the technique, but I couldn't get it quite right and knew I was missing some vital step.
As I returned home, I began to be on the look out for these Cretan designs. They were distinctive and easy to spot due to their unique layout, motifs, and colors, but most of the historic pieces I saw had been either woven, or embroidered with running stitch, but rarely cross stitch. One of my vintage patterns had a small snippet of a design adapted for cross stitch, but it was somewhat primitive and didn't really convey the feel and visual power of the historic textiles. So, I put "Cretan table runner" on my design board and waited.
Then last summer on a whim, I bought a random box described as "vintage patterns from Athens", not really sure what to expect. When the box arrived weeks later, it was filled with over a hundred snippets of patterns. They were old, yellowed, and many had been folded so many times that sections were faded and almost unreadable. I realized it was a woman's personal "wish list" of projects that she had clipped and saved for decades, and with this realization, felt honored to be a part of her creative journey. I made myself a cup of tea and sat down to look everything over and it was like sitting down with a stitching friend, chatting about what designs we like and what we wanted to stitch. I saw her love of her homeland when I found three copies of a cross stitch Parthenon and smiled when I found several designs that were clearly meant for children, maybe her children or grandchildren? I imagined her sitting down to her stitching each day, dreaming up new projects from her pattern stash. She loved flowers, Greek dancers, complex borders and lo and behold, Cretan cross stitch designs! At the bottom of the pile were three beautiful and elaborate Cretan table runner designs, all of which were only partial patterns, faded and missing sections, but they were just the start I needed.
Using her pattern snippets as a starting point and then studying photos of woven Cretan textiles, I was able to familiarize myself with the motifs and build the Kolimbari Diamonds design. One snippet had most of the traditional colors--navy, red, yellow, green, taupe, black--but when I started stitching it, it felt a bit too high contrast so I softened the colors to warmer, darker shades, using 924 grey green very dk for the navy, garnet for the bright red, and keeping the butter yellow, leaf green, coral pink, and that wonderful, balancing taupe. Aha, there was the effect I was going for, a softened, almost aged feel that connected this design to the past.
When I made another trip to Greece in the fall of 2024, I spent three days with my embroidery tutor in Athens, and at the top of my list was learning the fringe technique. As she showed me step-by-step, sure enough, the crucial step I was missing was working a stitch to stabilize the vertical threads. And, to my surprise, this stitch was my old familiar Drawn Thread hem stitch worked on one side only. No fussy mitered corners, no anxiety-inducing trimming of fabric, just the simple stitch worked across the row before you pulled the vertical threads. I created the How to fringe finish your cross stitch embroidery to walk stitchers through the process.
Finally! I had my design, my palette, and my finishing technique. I stitched up my design, delighted by how quickly it worked up despite how intricate it looked. I made a smaller, companion design Little Baskets cross stitch folk embroidery kit so stitchers could "test drive" the fringe finish technique and get comfortable with it before working it on a larger project.
These days, I've got Kolimbari Diamonds sitting on a table with a plant near my work table and it makes me smile every time I walk by. It's graceful, modern, interesting, all those things that originally drew me into historic Cretan textiles and I'm honored to be a small part of keeping these historic motifs and textile traditions alive. I've got a couple more of these Cretan-inspired designs on my design wall and can't wait to get to stitching them!
