From Christianity to Heathen times...

I should confess that I am about to go to the Maternity Hospital to give birth to my second sun.

And now as I'm finishing my red Slavic design with the Great Mother-Ancestress I ponder over the fact that my pregnancy started with the work on the lovely Madonna and Child design.

When I finished stitching the model embroidery in October, 2011, I learned that I was pregnant. And I remember that I was stitching in a very positive mood and enjoyed the process of stitching very much.

And the end of my pregnancy is marked with the work on the wonderful heathen design of the Great Mother-Ancestress.

I find it curious that within these 9 months I made such a complicated and retrospective trip from the basic Christian theme back to our heathen origins.

My husband jokes that my next passion will surely be stone age idols and cave drawings.

 Well, you never know where one can find inspiration...

Slavic heritage

While I was preparing materails on the semantics of Russian folk embroidery I got so fascinated by the poetics of Slavic motifs and ornaments that I could not help designing my own patterns inspired by the original Russian embroideries.

Russian folk embroideries

And I'm thinking about working out a whole series of 3-4 designs dedicated to and based on the traditional Northern Russian embroidery motifs that will be called "Slavic Heritage".

Surviving pieces of double horse headed boat embroideries,
2nd half of the XIX century.

Original folk embroidery motifs of female slavic
spirits of procreation 

As soon as these desings are finished I will comment in details the meaning of each element of these patterns. And I  plan to post soon an article about the semantics of traditional Russian embroidery motifs that will as well highlighten the motifs that are in use here.