Throughout history – whether through war and conquest or through migration of peoples or through other myriad events – cultures have mixed, and when mixing, they influence subsequent developments in the arts. Last week, while I was preparing this Hungarian embroidery pattern for publishing, I found myself thinking of the various influences on embroidery design, and in particular, I contemplated the Ottoman influence on Hungarian design. (Incidentally, Mike mentioned the Turkish influence on Hungarian embroidery in the comment section on the aforementioned Hungarian embroidery pattern published earlier this week).

There is something about this design of Lilly’s that struck me as particularly Byzantine-ish, and this thought led me to looking for examples of Turkish embroidery and designs online, which in turn led me to some good design resources. Today, I’ll share those resources with you and point out some things that struck me as similar between Hungarian and Turkish designs.

First, let’s start with part of Lilly’s design: