Colcha Embroidery: Stitching Together the History of the Southwest
By Felix Brigham
In recent years, embroidery and other fiber arts have undergone a resurgence in popularity as new generations have taken up these forms of creative expression. The modern embroidery revival could make you forget that these art forms have been practiced by a wide range of communities for centuries. One of the oldest and most overlooked forms of embroidery in the Southwest is called colcha. Long before store bought kits, pre-stamped cloth, or colorfast thread, women were combining creativity and necessity to create embroidered works that told stories and preserved their culture. I’ve always loved fiber arts but had never heard of colcha prior to working at the Presidio Museum. I can credit Kathy Shepard, one of our wonderful docents, with teaching me about it for the first time.
Colcha is the Spanish word for bed covering, but in embroidery, it refers to a Spanish colonial style of needlework that was practiced in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. What makes colcha unique is the colcha stitch. To use this technique, you first make a long base stitch and then go back with the same thread to couch or tack it down with a few small stitches. The stitches vary in length and direction, which allows the stitcher to “paint” with their yarn. The needle will occasionally split the yarn, which gives colcha its signature texture and sense of movement.
Traditionally, colcha was worked on sabanilla, a handwoven wool cloth, using wool thread. Colonial women would weave their own fabric and spin their own thread from fleece. They used a variety of natural materials to dye their threads, like cochineal, yellow rabbitbrush, and wild cherries. The most common designs were more scattered, stretching floral and fauna motifs or scenes from the stitcher’s life or Catholic faith wherein the entire cloth was covered with embroidery. Colcha would typically be used for bed covers and wall hangings.
Today, textile artists continue to make colcha. It is more common for stitchers today to use commercially produced cloth and yarn, but some still spin fleece, weave sabanilla, and dye their own yarn with natural dyes. Some stitchers strictly stick to the colcha stitch, but it is more common to see stitchers combine it with other stitches such as the satin stitch or the running stitch.
As part of learning more about colcha, I decided to try it for myself. I worked wool thread on linen and used the satin stitch on some smaller parts of my design. I had quite a lot of fun experimenting with the colcha stitch and have a greater appreciation for its uniqueness. While I would consider myself to be a fairly experienced embroiderer, I think this stitch would be suitable for beginners and seasoned stitchers alike. One of my favorite parts of working with fiber arts is feeling connected to the generations of women who came before me. It was great to be able to experience this with a form of needlework that is specific to the Southwest. Through practicing colcha we can physically connect to history and continue the traditions of the Southwest.
