Learning the Tradition of il Ricamo

Yet again, this is another opportunity to marvel at how strange my life has become!

I've started attending a (free) class in Davoli to learn the art of il ricamo (embroidery). You can't turn around in Calabria without running into a tablecloth that was artfully decorated with embroidered flowers fifty years ago. It seems that was the hobby girls had!

My mother-in-law and aunts learned to sew from the nuns who run the preschool. These days, there are only four nuns left, and none of them teach anymore. But there's a group of women who carry on the tradition at the preschool.

Surprisingly, it was my younger friend who grew up in Milan who turned me onto the idea of the class. We are by far the youngest in the group by decades, but it's all good fun!

Hard Work and Patience

I learned how to sew and cross stitch from my mom when I was young, so I wasn't completely out of my element. But embroidery was something new!

As I piano, piano learn new stitches, I find a sense of calm in the work. When we meet, I sit quietly doing my work while listening to the others chat about recipes and children.

They think it's interesting that I, the American fiance of a local Davoli boy, have taken an interest in their traditions!

This same scene could have occurred 100 years ago. 200 years ago. Women gathered for the comfort of community and sewing. You don't get more traditional than that!

Occasionally, I make a blunder and our teacher, Vittoria, gently rips out my stitches and course-corrects me. It's humbling, but one of the lessons of this work is that it's not the destination. It's the journey.

Clean Work Through and Through

At our last class, I proudly showed off my completed embroidered flowers. The ladies cooed and complimented me...until Vittoria turned the material over.

"Su! The back side is a mess!"

I asked what it mattered since no one would ever see the back. Vittoria said it DID matter, and that the nuns always taught them that the work should be clean and perfect both on the front and on the back.

Grumbling to myself about the pointlessness of the back of my embroidery needing to be pretty, I asked one of the nuns that I'm friends with. She laughed and shrugged her shoulders because embroidery isn't her thing.

I asked another, and she said, "Hard work is like that."

It was a simple phrase, but it hit. I realized that if I wanted to do the work, I needed to do it right.

And so, I'm working on making the back of my embroidery as pretty as the front!