Ribbon and crewel embroidery kits books and by TatianaPopovaCrafts

My name is Tatiana Popova. I love flowers very much, but they fade too quickly, even orchids! Meanwhile, silk ribbon looks very much like a flower petal. That is why I am fond of using natural silk ribbon in my projects.

Ribbon embroidery is relatively young craft. Its age is about 350. It appeared in France, therefore its full name sounds The French Silk Ribbon Embroidery.
The story of inventing the ribbon is rather unusual. It sounds like a philosopical problem: what was the first to appear - a hen or an egg? In our case it is: a fabric or a ribbon? For some reason one usually wants to say: certainly it was ribbon. For ribbon is like a nerrow fabric, thus perhaps being easier in manufacturing. But in fact it was quite vice verca! The first ribbons were created from fabrics when fabric was cut into narrow stripes! Thus we can think of e. g. Hanah silk ribbon as a grandchild of ancient ribbon, not a forefather. They say, the heads of Greek beauties were decorated just with this very kind of ribbon, what is shown by ancient statues.
The art of ribbon embroidery indeed has a royal origin, as it was born in ther palace of Ludovic the XV. At the very beginning there were plain rococo roses. Being embroiderd in silk ribbon, they charmed the spectators with their nature-like beauty. Ribbon embroidery masterpieces exhibited in museums of Europe are just amazing!
This art could not stay within borders of France. Soon people started to do ribbon embroidery in the UK, from where this art spreaded all over the world, up to the farthers places of the British Empire. Together with pilgrims ribbon embroidery reached America, where it soon became very popular as well.
A touching fact: in Bulgaria it is still called "The unheared-of wonder".