#colcha

Maybe you’ve read about it in my story, called Josefina’s Surprise. It’s about the  Christmas time when my sisters and I had to repair my mother’s altar cloth. You can see the lovely, intricate flowers in Clara’s lap. 

Why did we have to repair it? You’ll have to read the book to find out!

Clara had a special talent for colcha, but all of us learned the skill when we were very young. The method of colcha is easy enough for a child to learn, but it takes a long time to learn the patience to sit still and focus on the pattern. But don’t worry--you don’t have to be as good as my Mamá to enjoy it! That’s why I included the instructions in my book, called Josefina’s Craft Book. In it, you’ll find this very simple pattern of a little goat jumping over a flower.

If you like it a lot and want to learn more patterns, you can check your library or a quilt store for books about embroidery. I used a handbook made by the Albuquerque chapter of an embroidery guild that’s got lots of designs that have been used in New Mexico for hundreds of years! 

Colcha has been around for a long time. It started in medieval Europe, and has been popular ever since. When you’re embroidering by firelight or dim oil lamp light, sometimes it’s hard to see your stitches, so colcha uses a couching stitch to go back over your straight stitches and place diagonal lines of thread across it. So it has a practical use by filling in the gaps, and as a bonus, it also looks pretty neat! 

Colcha was brought to North America from Spain in the 1600s, and it was popular in very isolated villages of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, because people there had to make everything by hand. They raised their own wool, spun it into yarn, and wove it into cloth. Then they embroidered it give it distinctiveness, beauty, and a little more durability. Special items like altar cloths were embroidered with very intricate designs, and everyday items like bedspreads and handkerchiefs were a little more simple. 

Sometime in the middle of the 1800s, colcha stopped being so popular, because trade with the United States gave people the chance to buy factory-made cloth items. And that was a lot more practical, because it saved time, and also families didn’t have to save any home-raised wool for themselves--they could sell or trade it all. 

It wasn’t until the Great Depression of the 1930s that colcha, and all handicrafts, become popular again. Nowadays, commercial linens are back in style, but people all around the world still appreciate colcha! In Europe and America, it’s mostly used for decorative items. And you can see very old examples of the best Spanish colcha in museums all over the Southwest. Here is one that was displayed in a Santa Fe museum a few years ago: 

You won’t be making anything like that today... you’ll start much smaller! 

Ready to start? 

Here’s what you’ll need: 

A cloth background. You can use anything you want to embroider. I used a cotton with a loose weave that used to be a tablecloth. Wool embroidery yarn. Wool is best because it’s thick and chunky, so it fills in gaps much easier. It’s not as thick as knitting yarn. You might find it in craft stores sold as “crewel”. Of course, you can use cotton or silk thread, but you’ll have to make your stitches much smaller and more numerous!  A needle. Scissors. An embroidery hoop. 

Once you have all that, copy this pattern onto your fabric. 

You can use transfer paper, or print it and trace over it onto the fabric with a pen. The original pattern is about 2.5 inches long from the goat’s tail to the end of its nose. 

Once that’s done, secure your embroidery hoop. Make sure the fabric is very taut.

Now thread your needle, and make your first few stitches. Starting at the bottom left of the goat’s body, make a straight, diagonal stitch. 

Then make a few more parallel to it but not touching it, sort of like zebra stripes or ladder rungs. 

Here’s how your stitches will progress.

First, the base stitches.

Then, go back over the base stitches with the couching stitches (green).

See how the couching stitches form a sort of zipper? They cross into the gaps left by the neighboring stitches. If you imagine them as filling odd and even-numbered spaces, it would look like this:

If the yarn is thick enough and you've done it right, then you should be filling in all the gaps, giving the embroidery a nice texture. 

Keep going! Make your base stitches longer to fit the goat’s body, but keep the couching stitches the same size. 

Fill in the goat’s legs, ears, and tail the same way.

Then do the flower.

And you’re done! 

Wasn’t that fun and easy? Here are a few more I’ve made, with cotton thread. Small stitches make a totally different texture, but they take more time.