Sew -- a needle pulling thread

Let's start at the very beginning... a very good place to start... okay -- I know it's not Sound of Music time, it was Shu embroidery shoppe -- one of the largest centres in China. One of the four great Chinese embroidery styles, Shu embroidery was developed in and around the city of Chengdu in Sichuan province. Shu embroidery is typically done on the soft satin fabric produced in Sichuan province.

But it all begins with a little ball of white woven threads, thinner than a single human hair.

We had visited a silk shop in Beijing near the Olympic village and Julia, Kate, Tia and Jenna all got silk pillows that fold out into magical blankets -- that is what Julia maintains as she falls asleep as soon as she gets under it. So the girls knew about the life cycle of a silk worm so this was just reinforcement.

Here is the stretching of the threads so they can be spun into thread.

A rainbow of threads - love the colours. These colored threads, when evenly stitched produce a delicate picture or pattern.

Once you've got thread you can do brocade --we were told that Chengdu which is the starting city for ancient silk road is also known as Brocade City. We saw this elaborate weaving machine that would have been used in ancient times.

It's a two-person operation - Weaver 1 above passes the threaded spools between the guide threads, but Weaver 2 is responsible for the pattern.

She is pulling a series of threads tied to pulleys and weights that determine the pattern of the fabric...and the result is this

Work is now done in high volume with computerized weaving machines, but it was interesting to see that this would have been the way the silk for the jackets, and dress we got in Beijing would have been made. In. ancient times, the only one who could wear silk was the emperor -- there's a reason -- very expensive cloth for all that work. Here are our outfits ...

The embroidery is very delicate work as well...

and the end result -- spectacular. A Shu embroidered piece may include hundreds of thousands of stitches in a single figure or animal, and may take many days or even weeks to complete. One of the most popular subjects for Shu embroiderers is the panda bear, but scenes of nature of any kind are common. Julia got a little square of two pandas playing that we'll get framed when we get home. Here's something more elaborate...

I made a purchase on a considerable smaller scale - Janet and I each bought some some medallion style embroidered pieces. There are some walls at home calling for a bit of colour and texture.

The girls also got a lesson on how to pull the silk from the coccons into a layer to be used for a silk-filled duvet...again we tried this in Beijing and were hoping another lesson would do the trick...

So the girls dove in to pull and stretch

Perhaps the third time would be the charm -- for the time being, Julia is content to sleep on, under, near her mini silk duvet.