Humanity / Nature / Life
Yinchuan Evening Newspaper Official Fang Wenhua WeChat Pingtai | No. 1022
Joyaru.
In the 2021 Ningxia Yellow River Basin Intangible Cultural Heritage Creative Competition held this year, the embroidery project from Haiyuan County, "Chopped Embroidery Bag" created by Qiao Yaru, an autonomous region-level inheritor, won the second prize. Winning awards again and again has made Qiao Yaru's determination more firm, and she hopes that one day, Ningxia's embroidery skills can go out and let more people understand and like it.
Unique chopping embroidery
12 years have passed, and Qiao Yaru still remembers her original embroidery of "Rich Peony", which uses the embroidery technique of Ningxia.com.
Qiao Yaru said that "chopping embroidery", also known as "chopping needle embroidery", is a kind of embroidery stitch method widely spread in Haiyuan County, which is rumored to originate from the northwest ethnic minority areas during the Song and Xia Dynasties and has been passed down to this day. The difference from other embroidery is that on the embroidery needle, the general embroidery needle is solid, while the embroidery needle is a tubular embroidery needle made of fine steel pipe. The specific method is to first grind one end of the very fine steel pipe obliquely into an arrow-shaped needle, and then punch a thread hole vertically on the needle, and the other end of the needle is covered with a tubular bone of a suitable size or wrapped with fine copper wire, silver wire and other things, which is convenient for fingers to hold and prevent slippage. When embroidering, the embroidery thread is threaded through the needle tube, and then the thread is inserted into the hole next to the needle, and the embroidery can be embroidered according to the pattern drawn on the embroidery cloth.
Innovative traditional embroidery
"General embroidery is flat, while chopping embroidery has a three-dimensional feeling. Just like the towel, one side is flat, the other side is hairy, so that in the usual decorative use process, it can be preserved for a longer time, and the silk thread is not easy to break. Qiao Yaru said that the embroidery is mainly made of cotton and linen thread and embroidery cloth, which has good breathability, bright color, and is durable.
In the past, chopping embroidery was mainly single-sided, and Qiao Yaru made chopped embroidery double-sided after years of pondering and research. "Originally, the front was a pattern, and the reverse side was a messy stitch, which was not pretty, so I innovated on this basis." She said that after years of accumulated experience, she boldly broke through the usual chopping and embroidery method and created works in a way that combined chopping embroidery and flat needlework and random needlework. Flat needle embroidery and random needle embroidery are used as a foundation, focusing on the art of chopping embroidery, and the whole picture is more vivid. "I hope that our embroidery in Ningxia can continue to be passed on, and I believe that one day, it will go out of Ningxia and go to the whole country."
Colors in embroidery
Whether an embroidery work is good or not, whether it is elegant and calm, in addition to the embroidery technique, depends on the color matching. Qiao Yaru said that in some works, the color of the embroidery thread alone can reach as many as 12, these colors represent their respective meanings, how to organically unify, is also a science.
Qiao Yaru's embroidery work "Flowers Blossom rich".
She took out her own work "Flowers Bloom rich" to show. The whole work is based on the green line as the background color, representing vitality and vitality, symbolizing exuberant vitality. The bright green color sets off the bright and dazzling peony flowers, and from the overall point of view, the peony is graceful and luxurious, very vibrant. Look closely at the petals of the peony, the upward side is dominated by the red line, representing the rich, auspicious and warm emotions, which enhances the visual beauty of the whole work; the downward side of the petals is embroidered with pink silk thread, pink is very dreamy, as a red collocation, it appears cute, sweet, innocent and gentle, making a flower rich and not ostentatious, gorgeous and not vulgar. The final finishing touch is the yellow flower buds, as if to make people smell a faint floral fragrance.
Qiao Yaru's hometown is in Haiyuan County, where the mountains are high and the ditches are deep. She remembered that when she was a child, the sea plains in her eyes were earthy yellow, there were no trees on the top of the mountain, and there were no trees in the fields. When she grew up, she also dreamed of planting trees in the mountains of her hometown and putting them in a green coat. Qiao Yaru said that she may have been in that environment for a long time, so when she saw bright colors, she always had a very keen feeling, and her grasp of color matching was also in place.
A wonderful dream
"When I was in elementary school, once my grandmother embroidered two plum blossoms on the collar of one of my shirts, one on one side, which was particularly beautiful, and I liked it very much. One day when I came home, because it was hot, I took off my clothes and tied them to my bag, only to find that the clothes were missing, and I didn't find them when I went back, so I cried for several days. Qiao Yaru said that she fell in love with embroidery, all because of the influence of her grandmother and mother. For as long as I can remember, my mother and grandmother would embroider on quilts and pillows, and she was fascinated by the exquisite patterns and bright silk threads. When I was a child, the family conditions were not very good, so the clothes that the children in the village usually wore were mostly single-tone, and for girls who loved beauty, they were particularly eager to have some decorations on the clothes. She considers herself lucky, because both her grandmother and mother can do embroidery, so there are often some beautiful patterns and decors on her clothes.
At the age of twelve or thirteen, Qiao Yaru no longer only looked at the embroidery made by her grandmother and mother, but really began to get started with embroidery. Under the guidance of her mother, she personally completed the production of a pair of insoles herself, and since then she has become even more obsessed with embroidery. In 2004, Qiao Yaru officially started her embroidery career; in 2005, she founded her own hand embroidery sales store and has been doing chopping embroidery with her mother; in 2009, Qiao Yaru created her own studio under the brand of "Qianzhen Embroidery" and innovated many embroidery works.
Today, her greatest wish is to pass on the embroidery skills of Ningxia so that more people can understand and like it. "I always have a scene in my head that is particularly clear. I remember when I was a child, my grandmother and mother would comb some hair, so I took these hairs to find the freighter to change the colored embroidery thread. Every time I heard the shouting of the cargo man, I almost rushed out. Qiao Yaru said that those colored silk threads were like a beautiful dream. Today, she still weaves this beautiful dream with the silk thread in her hand.
Text | Liu Xuzhuo
Images courtesy of the interviewee
Editor| Seventh Floor Qi Yu
The head of the duty | Li Zhenwen
Produced by Yinchuan News Media Group [Yidu Culture].
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