Looking Back II. – Home Blessing

My cousin and his family have a little farmhouse in a small village in the northern part of Hungary close to the border.

When they bought this house it was ruinous condition, however since then they’ve been working a lot to rebuild and build on an extension to it. The work hasn’t been finished yet, but it is coming on well. When they first set their eyes on the old building in a romantic and prolific garden.

And here it is today.

And this is a bonus picture for you guys: a printed–painted pattern calendered with a rubber roller on a white basic that came out during the dismolition–excavation. Unfortunately the condition of the plaster was so bad that it was impossible to save the original pattern, so only a picture of it will remain for the posterity.

Even though we cannot visit my cousin and his family in their farmhouse so often that we would like to, we always spend good time there together. At the end of the garden there is a babbling creek on which their ducks with noisy gaggling swim about in all the summertime (they are always really cute). Over the creek there is a small forest just beginning.

Because they are running a second household there, for Christmas and other family occasions we often give them presents that suit for their little farmhouse and they can also use them there (for example self-made tablecloth or bedclothes). For this Christmas we figured that it would be nice if I made a Home Blessing for them.

In the usual old Hungarian farmhouse there was always a Home Blessings on the wall. As far as I know it is also used by other nations, however when I googled on the Internet I found the Irish people have a bunch of Home Blessings with different texts. In Hungary the text is always the same with only some difference in the design at most. Of course the Home Blessing is almost always embroidered with all the regions having their own style and pattern. This is the text in English:

Home Blessing

Where belief is, there is love
Where love is, there is peace
Where peace is, there is blessing
Where blessing is, there is God
Where God is, there is no dearth.

This Home Blessing embroided in Kalocsa style (pronunciation: Kalocha). It is a traditional Hungarian embroidery named after the town of Kalocsa, where it originated. "Writing women" in this town on the Danube in Southern Hungary draw their designs on white or pastel colored fabrics. Daisies, marigolds, cornflowers, poppies, lilies, tulips and roses furnish the colorful motifs.

This is another example made with “written embroidery” from Kalotaszeg. Kalotaszeg is located in Transylvania between the River Körös and the River Kalota. The “written embroidery” is made on homespun canvas with thick cotton thread which is red, blue, black or white monochrome colored. Its motifs come from the nature: tulip, marjoram, poppy, apple and pear. 

I’ve found a nice Webpage which is about a Transylvanian village in Hungarian language, you could find further embroideries there: 
http://magyarvalko.mindenkilapja.hu/gallery/19739303/renderimages/17142475/kalotaszegi-irottas

So back on the subject of my Home Blessing. In my cousin’s farmhouse there are old and traditional furniture, stuff supplemented with some modern ones. So I did not choose a fancy and complicated embroidery, but based on a „blue-dyeing” (Hungarian „kékfestő”) cotton I made a relatively simple structured Home Blessing.

I embroidered the text with my sewing machine. It was the first time that I used it for that so I suffered a lot with it. But I didn’t give up and finally I finished with it, and it turned out to be just as I’ve imagined.

The „blue-dyeing” (Hungarian „kékfestő”) with blue and white color patterns are typically Hungarian cotton fabrics. Here are a few sites (the first one is English-written) about them.

http://www.blaudruckerei.hu/angol.htm

http://www.kekfestokovacs.hu

http://www.kekfestomuzeum.hu/a-muzeum

Have fun looking around!