Artistic sewing-weaving
The artistic weaving has a special place in the traditional handicraft art. The artistic weaving and sewing were skills made in the family and represented a part of the Romanian woman's main occupation. From the daily clothes to those of feast and to the textiles that "dressed" their house, everything was made by the hard-working hands of the Romanian woman from the village.
The material used is: the cotton, the natural silk, the flax, the wool, especially for the textiles for the interior (towels, carpets). The handmade textures, although made with lathes simple enough, can be executed in the most complicated techniques, high quality pieces being obtained. Inside the peasent houses, the carpets were the folk pieces for decoration.
In Moldavia, there are different types of carpets - even (kilim type) and with knots (Oriental type). The carpet of Oriental type, also named "rug" is different by the traditional Oriental carpet through the smaller densuty of the knots and the bigger length of the threads. The Romanian rugs vary from a region to another. Regarding the decoration, the rugs in Moldavia, have more pronounced borders with models representing little branches that repeat in ranges in order to create a life tree. In the Northeast of Moldavia, the rugs have a decoration mainly based on stylized symbolical motifs and with a varied chromatics.
Carpets
In Oltenia, the rugs distinguish through models that symbolises the nature - flowers, birds and often, women silhouettes in traditional costumes. Another different style is that from Maramures. Using natural colours, the decoration is represented by squares that alternate, each of these squares containing a figure that represent a scene from the nature or from the daily life. Often , the borders of these rugs represent the stars from the sky or a traditional village dance.famous centres for the traditional artistic textures exist in Modavia in Bucovina region at Ciocanesti (carpets), Carlibaba (textoles for the interior), in Transylvania, such textiles can be found at Sancraieni (Harghita), Bargau (carpets) and Bistrita-Bargaului (textures and seams with a varied chromatics), and in Bistrita-Nasud. In Mountaina, weaving centres are in Arges area at Leresti and Topoloveni.
In the course of time, the Romanian peasant has always tried to create an as harmonious as possible environment, in which even the objects for daily use could render his life more enjoyable. Women used to weave cloth of hemp, flax, wool or cotton threads of which they made pieces of clothing for their family members or tissues for household use, such as towels, carpets and wall-carpets. The wall and bed-carpets are traditional for the peasant household where they are used to cover the walls and beds (but never the floor).
Oltenian carpets, some of which are more than one hundred years old, are actually genuine documents showing the ancient traditional local elements as far as the ornaments and weaving technique are concerned.
Folk romanian towels
Houses in the village area are very colorful, thanks to the lovely embroidered or woven textiles which housewives use to decorate walls, benches, beds and tables. Towels for this purpose were made of linen hemp or cotton, but the most gorgeous textiles are the woolen kilim rugs which, like the towels, can be used on the benches, walls and beds as well as the floor. Carpet and towel designs incorporate stylized, symbolic motifs (geometrical, zoomorphic) in a wide range of colors. The colors are very special and combine subtle shades of brown, black and yellow, formally obtained from vegetable dyes, specific to Moldavia.
The towels are used in different events: baptism, weeding, etc
Coarse-stuff peasant coat is a long coat made from “panura”, a special kind of weaving. This coat is very important and has an old tradition. These coats are usually in one color, black being the most common one. Regarding the decorations of the sheepskin coat it represented the social status of the wearer. Making this an artistic trade occurred when this became a guild trade, practiced by specialized persons who filled out orders. Usually there where never made 2 coats of the same kind except for a married young couple. The technique used in this trade is very well guarded and passed on to other members of the family.