Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

Hand crafted Vietnamese dragons made from new and vintage fabrics

I have resisted heading this post Vietnamese hand crafted animals as whenever I’ve included the word ‘Vietnamese’ in the title of a post I’ve attracted lots of spam comments, very few of which seem to have anything to do with Vietnam. (See here for Vietnamese skirts and land mine clearance, here  for Vietnamese ceramics and here for Vietnamese reverse appliqué, if you are interested.)

Vietnamese hand crafted dragon showing vintage hand embroidery

People  who’ve followed this blog will know that daughter No 2 is country director for MAG Vietnam (MAG is the acronym for the Mines Advisory Group, an NGO involved in the clearing of unexploded ordinance worldwide). She has been in Vietnam for about 3 years and as her work takes her to many distant and isolated regions she has come to know where to find the best of local crafts. The handmade animals in this post are a fascinating combination of modern and vintage fabric. The cross stitch embroidery probably comes from remnants of the beautiful skirts which I talked about in the first of the posts mentioned above and it is delightful that the good bits of fabric have taken on a second life as these fanciful creatures.

Hand crafted Vietnamese monkey made from modern fabric and vintage cross stitch embroidery.

Daughter No 3 spent a couple of months with her sister in Vietnam this summer and their new nephew provided the perfect excuse for them to indulge in buying some of the toy animals in the pictures. I’m not sure I should call them toys as although they are beautifully made I don’t know how the eyes for example are attached and I have already had to sew a bit of stuffing back into the puppets paws.  But, never mind, they should look wonderful on a top shelf until  the bouncing baby is old enough to stop trying to chew everything.

Hand crafted hand puppets made from new and vintage textiles

Hand crafted Vietnamese hand puppets in new and vintage textiles

Vietnamese hand puppets made from vintage and new fabric: detail of hand embroidered heads

Bouncing baby thought the puppets were great fun and as there’s no room on his top shelves, they are now sitting looking very much at home on a couple of bottles of nice wine behind the drinks tray.

Just a couple of photos today and not much text as I’m about to resume night time nanny duties in London. The Scottish Referendum vote is followed almost immediately by the party conference season and both daughter No1 and her husband are doing their seasonal dragging of suitcases, notebooks and microphones around the UK’s conference hotspots.

Altar frontal: revised sunflower and original sunflower (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Somehow sunflower mark 2 grew and I found myself having to appliqué the leaves beyond the border of the black star.  At the moment I like the effect, although it is always possible that I shall find it really irritating in the future – time will tell.

Altar frontal: revised sunflower and original sunflower (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

If you thirst to revise the fascination of sunflower heads and the layout of their seeds according to the Fibonacci series, do look back to here.

The only other  thing I wanted to add to this and to the previous sunflower posts was a photo of the terracotta sunflowers that decorate the front  of a few houses in Arts and Crafts Bedford Park (the world’s first garden suburb on the Chiswick/Acton borders in West London) but once again I have managed neither to go myself nor to persuade friends  still living there to do it for me. I lived in Chiswick for 25 years but to look at my photographs, you would never guess. Meanwhile I hope you enjoy embroidered versions.