Kyrgyzstan - Tush-kiyiz, Traditional Skills in Making Wall Carpets

Embroidery is an interesting and good pattern for handicraft. I would say that it would be good if girls could learn embroidery, making beautiful things. Making tush-kiyiz is very difficult, but easy at the same time. The technology is as follows - first you need to make a pattern, in other words, you need to make a design of future tush-kiyiz. When the design is ready, it should be carefully transferred on the material, and then add the embroidery. So before starting making tush-kiyiz, we need to make the design, and then we need to measure the wall of the house or the walls of traditional boz-ui (called kerege) and cut the cloth of proper size. Then we put embroidery on the ready cloth. Before we start we need to prepare different strings, for example, mouline thread, iris and woolen strings. We should buy it according to the colors of our embroidery, and use it accordingly. After we cut the cloth of the proper form and put design on it, the cloth should be hanged on wooden expansion. Without wooden expansion, we cannot make embroidery with an awl. In this case, it will be made with needle, and it is called hinge embroidery. Therefore, there are two types of embroidery. When we use wooden expansion, it is called expansion embroidery or awl embroidery, and when we use needle it is called hinge embroidery. That is why we fasten the tush-kiyiz on the expansion and start making embroidery. We mostly use black color wool and velvet. Long ago, our grandmother used sateen, because it was of good quality. We can also use wool and leather, because embroidery looks so beautiful on every surface, but it is also so difficult to make. Tush-kiyiz is a beautiful carpet used in the design of nomad Kyrgyz people’s boz-ui, and has its own precious place in art. Normally, Tush-kiyiz is hang on the right side of boz-ui. Tush-kiyiz was made of wool, as it was originally called, back then. Since Kyrgyz people were nomads, wool was the most convenient material for nomadic life. Since we lived in boz-ui, tush-kiyiz was initially used to keep it warm. Later people wanted to decorate their homes, and different patterns and pictures of the nature and environment and animals were reproduced on tush-kiyiz using strings, and later these strings were colored. The handicraft developed, and there were different types of patterns, showing the life styles and other pictures on it. Tusk-kiyiz has a rectangle shape with longer width, with an embroidery on the black color velvet on wider top and sides and is hang on the wall. The same velvet is used to make triangles that are added under Tusk-kiyiz’s top. Tey are called “tumarcha” and there should be three of them. Tumarcha is decorated with white of colorful fringe. The central part of tush-kiyiz without embroidery is made from velvet, sateen and silk. In addition, the central part of the modern tush-kiyiz is made from colorful silk or sateen. I will make a small box with embroidery. It is made with a needle, so it is called a “hinge embroidery”. The name of the pattern is “horn embroidery”, since the color of horn is brown and yellowish, we can use these two colors together and make the embroidery beautiful. Because a hinge embroidery is the most beautiful one. Because this type of embroidery is very tidy one. It is mostly used for garments, or small decoration pieces for walls and shelves, or it can also be used for decoration of small bag for scissors, mirror and other things. Left hand is always holds the thread in pressed position, and the right hand always makes the embroidery work. It is performed only with hands. Now there are machine embroidery available, but in our case, it is only needle and thread. If you want to make it bright, you need to have thick thread and the needle must be of the proper size. If you want to make it thin, then you should use 1 or 2 folded thread and the needle of the same thin size. Thin needle embroidery is also beautiful. The embroidery will be thin and small. If you want to make it thick and bigger, you need to use proper needle and thread. The one I am holding is thick needle, the second is medium size and the third is thin needle. Thin needle is used for thin clothes, the medium size is used for thicker material and the thick needle is used for wool, leather, and velvet embroidery. While working the stiches must be of the same size, not bigger and not smaller than the previous. When you start making the embroidery, you should have proper size from the beginning, if you start with big stiches, the picture will become big, if you start with small stiches, and it will be tiny like beads. If you make it big, it will look like a rope, if you make it medium size, the hinge embroidery will be really beautiful.