larger image1. TAPESTRY, SHOWING WARP.
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1. TAPESTRY, SHOWING WARP.
It is on just such upright lines of warp that all tapestry, properly so called, is worked—whether with the shuttle or with the needle makes no matter—and there is good reason, therefore, for the name of "tapestry stitch" to describe needlework upon the warp threads only of a material (usually linen) from which some of the weft threads have beenwithdrawn.
The only difference between true tapestry and drawn work, an example of which is here given, is, that the one is done on a warp that has not before been woven upon, and the other on a warp from which the weft threads have beendrawn. The distinction, therefore, between tapestry and embroidery is, that, worked on a warp, as in Illustration1, it is tapestry; worked on a mesh, as in Illustration3, it is embroidery.
larger image2. DRAWN WORK.
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2. DRAWN WORK.
With regard, again, to lace. That is itself a web, independent of any groundwork or foundationto support it. But it is possible to work itovera silken or other surface; and there is a kind of embroidery which only floats on the surface of the material without penetrating it. A fragment of last century silk given in Illustration35shows plainly what is meant.
larger image3. STITCHING ON A SQUARE MESH.
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3. STITCHING ON A SQUARE MESH.
Embroidery is enrichment by means of the needle. To embroider is to workonsomething: a groundwork is presupposed. And we usually understand by embroidery, needlework in thread (it may be wool, cotton, linen, silk, gold, no matter what) upon a textile material, no matter what. In short, it is the decoration of a material woven in thread by means still of thread. It is thustheconsistent way of ornamenting stuff—most consistent of all when one kind of thread is employed throughout, as in the case of linen upon linen, silk upon silk. The enrichment may, however, rightly be, and oftenest is, perhaps, in a material nobler than the stuff enriched, in silk upon linen, in wool upon cotton, in gold upon velvet. The advisability of working upon a precious stuff in threadlessprecious is open to question. It does not seem to have been satisfactorily done; but if it were only the background that was worked, and the pattern were so schemed as almost to cover it, so that, in fact, very little of the more beautiful texture was sacrificed, and you had still a sumptuous pattern on a less attractive background—why not? But then it would be because you wanted that lessprecious texture there. The excuse of economy would scarcely hold good.
In the case of a material in itself unsightly, the one course is to cover it entirely with stitching, as did the Persian and other untireable people of the East. But not they only. The famous Syon cope is so covered. Much of the work so done, all-over work that is to say, competes in effect with tapestry or other weaving; and its purpose was similar: it is a sort of amateur way of working your own stuff. But in character it is no more nearly related to the work of the loom than other needlework—it is still workonstuff. For all-over embroidery one chooses, naturally, a coarse canvas ground to work on; but it more often happens that one chooses canvas because one means to cover it, than that one works all over a ground because it is unpresentable.
Embroidery is merely an affair of stitching; and the first thing needful alike to the worker in it and the designer for it is, a thorough acquaintance with the stitches; not, of course, with every modification of a modification of a stitch which individual ingenuity may have devised—it would need the space of an encyclopædia to chronicle them all—but with the broadly marked varieties of stitch which have been employed to best purpose in ornament.
They are derived, naturally, from the stitches first used for quite practical and prosaic purposes—buttonholestitch, for example, to keep the edges of the stuff from fraying; herring-bone, to strengthen and disguise a seam; darning, to make good a worn surface; and so on.
The difficulty of discussing them is greatly increased by the haphazard way in which they are commonly named. A stitch is called Greek, Spanish, Mexican, or what not, according to the country whence came the work in which some one first found it. Each names it after his or her individual discovery, or calls it, perhaps, vaguely Oriental; and so we have any number of names for the same stitch, names which to different people stand often for quite different stitches.
When this confusion is complicated by the invention of a new name for every conceivable combination of thread-strokes, or for each slightest variation upon an old stitch, and even for a stitch worked from left to right instead of from right to left, or for a stitch worked rather longer than usual, the task of reducing them to order seems almost hopeless.
Nor do the quasi-learned descriptions of old stitches help us much. One reads aboutopusthis andopusthat, until one begins to wonder where, amidst all this parade of science, art comes in. But you have not far to go in the study of the authorities to discover that, though they may concur in using certain high-sounding Latin terms, they are not of the same mind as to their meaning.In one thing they all agree, foreign writers as well as English, and that is, as to the difficulty of identifying the stitch referred to by ancient writers, themselves probably not acquainted with thetechniqueof stitching, and as likely as not to call it by a wrong name. It is easier, for example, to talk ofOpus Anglicanumthan to say precisely what it was, further than that it described work done in England; and for that we have the simple word—English. There is nothing to show that mediæval English work contained stitches not used elsewhere. The stitches probably all come from the East.
Nomenclature, then, is a snare. Why not drop titles, and call stitches by the plainest and least mistakable names? It will be seen, if we reduce them to their native simplicity, that they fall into fairly-marked groups, or families, which can be discussed each under its own head.
Stitches may be grouped in all manner of arbitrary ways—according to their provenance, according to their effect, according to their use, and so on. The most natural way of grouping them is according to their structure; not with regard to whence they came, or what they do, but according to what they are, the way they are worked. This, at all events, is no arbitrary classification, and this is the plan it is proposed here to adopt.
The use of such classification hardly needs pointing out.
A survey of the stitches is the necessary preliminary, either to the design or to the execution of needlework. How else suit the design to the stitch, the stitch to the design? In order to do the one the artist must be quite at home among the stitches; in order to do the other the embroidress must have sympathy enough with a design to choose the stitch or stitches which will best render it. An artist who thinks the working out of his sketch none of his business is no practical designer; the worker who thinks design a thing apart from her is only a worker.
This is not the moment to urge upon the needlewoman the study of design, but to urge upon the designer the study of stitches. Nothing is more impractical than to make a design without realising the labour involved in its execution. Any one not in sympathy with stitching may possibly design a beautiful piece of needlework, but no one will get all that is to be got out of the needle without knowing all about it. One must understand the ways in which work can be done in order to determine the way it shall in any particular case be done.
Certain stitches answer certain purposes, and strictly only those. The designer must know which stitch answers which purpose, or he will in the first place waste the labour of the embroidress,and in the second miss his effect, which is to waste his own pains too. The effective worker (designer or embroiderer) is the one who works with judgment—and you cannot judge unless you know. When it is remembered that the character of needlework, and by rights also the character of its design, depends upon the stitch, there will be no occasion to insist further upon the necessity of a comprehensive survey of the stitches.
A stitch may be defined as the thread left on the surface of the cloth or what not, after each ply of the needle.
And the simple straightforward stitches of this kind are not so many as one might suppose. They may be reduced indeed to a comparatively few types, as will be seen in the following chapters.
The simplest, as it is most likely the earliest used, stitch-group is what might best be calledCanvasstitch—of which cross-stitch is perhaps the most familiar type, the class of stitches which come of following, as it is only natural to do, the mesh of a coarse canvas, net, or open web upon which the work is done.
A stitch bears always, or should bear, some relation to the material on which it is worked; but canvas or very coarse linen almost compels a stitch based upon the cross lines of its woof, and indeed suggests designs of equally rigid construction. That is so in embroidery no matter where. In ancient Byzantine or Coptic work, in modern Cretan work, and in peasant embroidery all the world over, pattern work on coarse linen has run persistently into angular lines—in which, because of that very angularity, the plain outcome of a way of working, we find artistic character. Artistic design is always expressive of its mode of workmanship.
Work of this kind is not too lightly to be dismissed. There is art in the rendering of form by means of angular outlines, art in the choice offorms which can be expressed by such lines. It is not uncharitable to surmise that one reason why such work (once so universal and now quite out of fashion) is not popular with needlewomen may be, the demand it makes upon the designer's draughtmanship: it is much easier, for example, to draw a stag than to render the creature satisfactorily within jagged lines determined by a linen mesh.
larger image4. CROSS-STITCH.
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4. CROSS-STITCH.
The piquancy about natural or other forms thus reduced to angularity argues, of course, no affectation of quaintness on the part of the worker, but was the unavoidable outcome of her way of work. There is a pronounced and early limit to art of this rather naïve kind, but that there is art in some of the very simplest and most modest peasant work built up on those lines no artist will deny. The art in it is usually in proportion to its modesty. Nothing is more futile than to put it to anythinglike pictorial purpose. The wonderfully wrought pictures in tent-stitch, for example, bequeathed to us by the 17th century, are painful object lessons in what not to do.
The origin of the term cross-stitch is not far to seek: the stitches worked upon the square mesh do cross. But, falling naturally into the lines of the mesh which governs them, they present not so much the appearance of crosses as of squares, reminding one of the tesseræ employed in mosaic.
TO WORK CROSS STITCH.
To explain the process of working cross-stitch would be teaching one's grandmother indeed. It is simply, as its name implies, crossing one stitch by another, following always the lines of the canvas. But the important thing about it is that the stitches must cross always in the same way; and, more than that, they must be worked in the same direction, or the mere fact that the stitches at thebackof the work do not run in the same way will disturb the evenness of the surface. What looks like a seam on the sampler opposite is the result of filling up a gap in the ground with stitches necessarily worked in vertical, whereas the ground generally is in horizontal, lines. On the face of the work the stitches cross all in the same way.
The common use of cross-stitch and the somewhat geometric kind of pattern to which it lends itself are shown in the sampler, Illustration5.
The broad and simple leafage, worked solid (A) or left in the plain canvas upon a groundwork ofsolid stitching (B), and the fretted diaper on vertical and horizontal lines (C), show the most straightforward ways of using it.
larger image5. CROSS-STITCH SAMPLER.
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5. CROSS-STITCH SAMPLER.
The criss-cross of alternating cross-stitches and open canvas framed by the key pattern (C) shows a means of getting something like a tint halfway between solid work and plain ground. The mere work line—or "stroke-stitch," not crossed (D), is a perfectly fair way of getting a delicate effect; but the design has a way of working out rather less happily than it promised.
The addition of such stroke-stitches to solid cross-stitch (E) is not at best a very happy device. It strikes one always as a confession of dissatisfaction on the part of the worker with the simple means of her choice. As a device for, as it were, correcting the stepped outline it is at its worst. Timid workers are always afraid of the stepped outline which a coarse mesh gives. In that they are wrong. One should employ canvas stitch only where there is no objection to a line which keeps step with the canvas; then there is a positive charm (for frank people at least) in the frank confession of the way the work is done.
There are many degrees in the frankness with which this convention has been accepted, according perhaps to the coarseness of the canvas ground, perhaps to the personality of the worker. The animal forms at the top of Illustration6are uncompromisingly square; the floral devices onthe same page, though they fall, as it were inevitably, into square lines, are less rigidly formal. The inevitableness of the square line is apparent in the sprig below (7). It was evidently meant to be freely drawn, but the influence of the mesh betrays itself; and the design, if it loses something in grace, gains also thereby in character.
larger image6. CANVAS-STITCH.
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6. CANVAS-STITCH.
larger image7. CANVAS-STITCH.
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7. CANVAS-STITCH.
There is literally no end to the variety of stitches, as they are called, belonging to this group, and their names are a babel of confusion. Florentine, Parisian, Hungarian, Spanish, Moorish, Cashmere, Milanese, Gobelin, are only a few of them; but they stand, as a rule, rather for stitch arrangements than for stitches. A small selection of them is given in Illustration8.
tent-stitch A.
What is known as tent-stitch (A in the sampler opposite) is a sort of half cross-stitch; its peculiarity is that it covers only one thread of thecanvas at a stroke, and is therefore on a more minute scale than stitches which are two or three threads wide, as cross-stitch may, and cushion-stitch must, be. It derives its name from the old word tenture, or tenter (tendere, to stretch), the frame on which the embroidress distended her canvas. The word has gone out of use, but we still speak of tenter-hooks. The stitch is serviceable enough in its way, but is discredited by the monstrous abuse of it referred to already. A picture in tent-stitch is even more foolish than a picture in mosaic. It cannot come anywhere near to pictorial effect; the tesseræ will pronounce themselves, and spoil it.
larger image8. CANVAS-STITCH SAMPLER.
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8. CANVAS-STITCH SAMPLER.
larger image9. CUSHION AND SATIN STITCHES.
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9. CUSHION AND SATIN STITCHES.
cross-stitch B.
This kind of half cross-stitch worked on the larger scale of ordinary cross-stitch would lookmeagre. It is filled out, therefore (B), by horizontal lines of the thread laid across the canvas, and over these the stitch is worked.
cushion-stitch C.
Cushion-stitch consists of diagonal lines of upright stitches, measuring in the sampler (C) six threads of the canvas, so that after each stitch the needle may be brought out just three threads lower than where it was put in. By working in zigzag instead of diagonal lines, a familiar pattern is produced, more often described as "Florentine;" but the stitch is in any case the same.
canvas-stitch D.
The stitch at D (sometimes called Moorish stitch) is begun by working a row of short vertical stitches, slightly apart, and completed by diagonal stitches joining them.
Unless the silk employed is full and soft, this may not completely cover the canvas, in which case the diagonal stitches must further be crossed as shown on Illustration89.
If the linen is loosely woven and the thread is tightly drawn in the working, the mesh is pulled apart, giving the effect of an open lattice of the kind shown at B, on Illustration10, in which the threads of the linen are not drawn out but drawn together.
canvas-stitch E.
The way of working the stitch at E is described on page51, under the name of "fish-bone." Worked on canvas it has somewhat the effect of plaiting, and goes by the name of "plait-stitch."It is worked in horizontal rows alternately from left to right and from right to left.
canvas-stitch F.
The stitch at F is a sort of couching (see page124). Diagonal lines of thread are first laid from edge to edge of the ground space, and these are sewn down by short overcasting stitches in the cross direction.
Admirable canvas stitch work has been done upon linen in silk of one colour—red, green, or blue—and it was a common practice to work the background leaving the pattern in the bare stuff. It prevailed in countries lying far apart, though probably not without inter-communication. In fact, the influence of Oriental work upon European has been so great that even experts hesitate sometimes to say whether a particular piece of work is Turkish or Italian. In Italian work, at least, it was usual to get over the angularity of silhouette inherent in canvas stitches by working an outline separately. When that is thin, the effect is proportionately feeble. The broader outline (shown at A, Illustration10) justifies itself, and in the case of a stitch which falls into horizontal lines, it appears to be necessary. This is plait stitch, known also by the name of Spanish stitch—not that it is in any way peculiar to Spain. It is allied to herring-bone-stitch, to which a special chapter is devoted.
larger image10. PLAIT AND OPEN CANVAS STITCHES.
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10. PLAIT AND OPEN CANVAS STITCHES.
Darning is also employed as a canvas stitch. There is beautiful 16th century Italian work (incoloured silks on dark net of the very open square mesh of the period), which is most effective, and in which there is no pretence of disguising the stepped outline; and in the very early days of Christian art in Egypt and Byzantium, linen was darned in little square tufts of wool upstanding on its surface, which look so much like the tesseræ of mosaic that it seems as if they must have been worked in deliberate imitation of it.
Again, in the 15th century satin-stitch was worked on fine linen with strict regard to the lines of its web; and the Persians, ancient and modern, embroider white silk upon linen, also in satin-stitch, preserving piously the rectangular and diagonal lines given by the material. They have their reward in producing most characteristic needlework. The diapered ground in Illustration9(page20) is satin-stitch upon coarse linen.
The filling-in patterns used to such delicate and dainty purpose in the marvellous work on fine cambric (Illustration73) which competes in effect with lace, though it is strictly embroidery, all follow in their design the lines of the fabric, and are worked thread by thread according to its woof: they afford again instances of perfect adaptation of stitch to material and of design to stitch.
Satin and other stitches were worked by the old Italians (Illustration3) on square-meshed canvas, frankly on the square lines given by it, for the filling in of ornamental details, though theoutline might be much less formal. That is to say, the surface of freely-drawn leaves, &c., instead of being worked solid, was diapered over with more or less open pattern work constructed on the lines of the weaving.
A cunning use of the square mesh of canvas has sometimes been made to guide the worker upon other fabrics, such as velvet. This was first faced with net: the design was then worked, over that, on to and into the velvet, and the threads of the canvas were then drawn out. That is a device which may serve on occasion. The design may even be traced upon the net.
For work in the hand,Crewel-Stitchis perhaps, on the whole, the easiest and most useful of stitches; whence it comes that people sometimes vaguely call all embroidery crewel work; though, as a matter of fact, the stitch properly so called was never very commonly employed, even when the work was done in "crewel," the double thread of twisted wool from which it takes its name.
the working of A on crewel-stitch sampler.
the working of A on crewel-stitch sampler.
larger image11. CREWEL-STITCH SAMPLER.
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11. CREWEL-STITCH SAMPLER.
larger image12. CREWEL-STITCH SAMPLER (BACK).
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12. CREWEL-STITCH SAMPLER (BACK).
to work A.
Crewel-Stitchproper is shown at A on the sampler opposite, where it is used for line work. It is worked as follows:—Having made a start in the usual way, keep your thread downwards under your left thumb and below your needle—that is,to the right; then take up with the needle, say ⅛th of an inch of the stuff, and bring it out through the hole made in starting the stitch, taking care not to pierce the thread. This gives the first half stitch. If you proceed in the same way your next stitch will be full length. The test of good workmanship is that at the back it should look like back-stitch (Illustration12), described on page30.
the working of B on crewel-stitch sampler.
the working of B on crewel-stitch sampler.
to work B.
Outline-Stitch(B on sampler) differs from crewel-stitch only in that the thread is always kept upwards above the needle, that is to the left. In so doing the thread is apt to untwist itself, and wants constantly re-twisting. The stitch is useful for single lines and for outlining solid work. The muddled effect of much crewel work is due to the confusion of this stitch with crewel-stitch proper.
to work C.
Thick Crewel-Stitch(C on sampler) is only a little wider than ordinary crewel-stitch, but gives a heavier line, in higher relief. In effect it resembles rope-stitch, but it is more simply worked. You begin as in ordinary crewel-stitch, but after the first half-stitch you take up ⅛th ofan inch of the material in advance of the last stitch, and bring out your needle at the point where the first half-stitch began. You proceed, always putting your needle in ⅛th of an inch in front of, and bringing it out ⅛th of an inch behind, the last stitch, so as to have always ¼th of an inch of the stuff on your needle.
the working ofGon crewel-stitch sampler.
the working ofGon crewel-stitch sampler.
to work D.
Thick Outline-Stitch(D on sampler) is like thick crewel-stitch with the exception that, as in ordinary outline-stitch (B), you keep your thread always above the needle to the left.
to work E.
InBack-Stitch(E), instead of first bringing the needle out at the point where the embroidery is to begin, you bring it out ⅛th of an inch in advance of it. Then, putting your needle back, you take up this ⅛th together with another ⅛th in advance. For the next stitch you put your needle into the hole made by the last stitch, and so on, taking care not to split the last thread in so doing.
to work F.
To work theSpots(F) on sampler—having made a back-stitch, bring your needle out through the same hole as before, and make another back-stitch above it, so that you have, in what appears to be one stitch, two thicknesses of thread; thenbring your needle out some distance in advance of the last stitch, and proceed as before. The distance between the stitches is determined by the effect you desire to produce. The thread should not be drawn too tight.
larger image13. CREWEL WORK AND CREWEL-STITCH.
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13. CREWEL WORK AND CREWEL-STITCH.
to work G.
You beginStem-Stitch(G) with the usual half-stitch. Then, holding the thread downwards, instead of proceeding as in crewel-stitch (A) you slant your needle so as to bring it out a thread or two higher up than the half-stitch, but precisely above it. You next put the needle in ⅛th of an inch in advance of the last stitch, and, as before, bring it out again in a slanting direction a thread or two higher. At the back of the work (Illustration12) the stitches lie in a slanting direction.
to work H.
To work widerStem-Stitch(H). After the first two stitches, bring your needle out precisely above and in a line with them, and put it in again ⅛th of an inch in advance of the last stitch, producing a longer stroke, which gives the measure of those following. The slanting stitches at the back (Illustration12) are only two-thirds of the length of those on the face.
Crewel and Outline Stitchesworked (J) side by side give somewhat the effect of a braid. The importance of not confusing them, already referred to, is here apparent.
Crewel-Stitchis workedSOLIDin the heart-shape in the centre of the sampler. On the left side the rows of stitching follow the outline ofthe heart; on the right they are more upright, merely conforming a little to the shape to be filled. This is the better method.
larger image14. CREWEL WORK IN VARIOUS STITCHES.
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14. CREWEL WORK IN VARIOUS STITCHES.
TO WORK SOLID CREWEL-STITCH.
The way to work solid crewel-stitch will be best explained by an instance. Suppose a leaf to be worked. You begin by outlining it; if it is a wide leaf, you further work a centre line where the main rib would be, and then work row within row of stitches until the space is filled. If on arriving at the point of your leaf, instead of going round the edge, you work back by the side of the first row of stitching, there results a streakiness of texture, apparent in the stem on Illustration13. What you get is, in effect, a combination of crewel and outline stitches, as at J, which in the other case only occurs in the centre of the shape where the files of stitches meet.
To represent shading in crewel-stitch, to which it is admirably suited (A, Illustration41), it is well to work from the darkest shadows to the highest lights. And it is expedient to map out on the stuff the outline of the space to be covered by each shade of thread. There is no difficulty then in working round that shape, as above explained.
In solid crewel the stitches should quite cover the ground without pressing too closely one against the other.
larger image15. CREWEL-STITCH IN TWISTED SILK.
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15. CREWEL-STITCH IN TWISTED SILK.
It does not seem that Englishwomen of the 17th century were ever very faithful to the stitch we know by the name of crewel. Old examples ofwork done entirely in crewel-stitch, as distinguished from what is called crewel work, are seldom if ever to be met with. The stitch occurs in most of the old English embroidery in wool; but it is astonishing, when one comes to examine the quilts and curtains of a couple of hundred years or so ago, how very little of the woolwork on them is in crewel-stitch. The detail on Illustration13was chosen because it contained more of it than any other equal portion of a handsome and typical English hanging; but it is only in the main stem, and in some of the outlines, that the stitch is used. And that appears to have been the prevailing practice—to use crewel-stitch for stems and outlines, and for little else but the very simplest forms. The filling in of the leafage, the diapering within the leaf shapes, and the smaller and more elaborate details generally were done in long-and-short-stitch, or whatever came handiest. In fact, the thing to be represented, fruit, berry, flower, or what not, seems to have suggested the stitch, which it must be confessed was sometimes only a sort of scramble to get an effect.
Of course the artist always chooses her stitch, and she is free to alter it as occasion may demand; but a good workwoman (and the embroidress is a needlewoman first and an artist afterwards, perhaps) adopts in every case a method, and departs from it only for very good reason. It looks as if our ancestors had set to work without system or guiding principle at all. No doubt theygot a bold and striking effect in their bed-hangings and the like; but there is in their work a lack of that conscious aim which goes to make art. Theirs is art of the rather artless sort which is just now so popular. Happily it was kept in the way it should go by a strict adherence to traditional pattern, which for the time being seems to have gone completely out of fashion.
Quite in the traditional manner is Illustration14. One would fancy at first sight that the work was almost entirely in crewel-stitch. As a matter of fact, there is little which answers to the name, as an examination of the back of the work shows plainly enough. What the stitches are it is not easy to say. The mystery of many a stitch is to be unravelled only by literally picking out the threads, which one is not always at liberty to do, although, in the ardour of research, a keen embroidress will do it—not without remorse in the case of beautiful work, but relentlessly all the same.
The only piece of embroidery entirely in crewel-stitch which I could find for illustration (15) is worked, as it happens, in silk; nor was the worker aware that in so working she was doing anything out of the common. Another instance of crewel-stitch is given in the divided skirt, let us call it, of the personage in Illustration72.
Beautiful back-stitching occurs in the Italian work on Illustration89, and the stitch is used for sewing down theappliquéin Illustration94.
larger image16. CHAIN-STITCH AND KNOTS.
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16. CHAIN-STITCH AND KNOTS.
ChainandTambour Stitchare in effect practically the same, and present the same rather granular surface. The difference between them is that chain-stitch is done in the hand with an ordinary needle, and tambour-stitch in a frame with a hook sharper at the turning point than an ordinary crochet hook. One takes it rather for granted that work which was presumably done in the hand (a large quilt, for example) is chain-stitch, and that what seems to have been done in a frame is tambour work, though it is possible, but not advisable of course, to work chain-stitch in a frame.
Chain-stitch is not to be confounded with split-stitch (see page105), which somewhat resembles it.
to work A.
To work chain-stitch (A on the sampler, Illustration17) bring the needle out, hold the threaddown with the left thumb, put the needle in again at the hole through which you brought it out, take up ¼ of an inch of stuff, and draw the thread through: that gives you the first link of the chain. The back of the work (18) looks like back-stitch. In fact, in the quilted coverlet, Illustration69(as in much similar work of the period), the outline pattern, which you might take for back-stitching, proves to have been worked from the back in chain-stitch. The same thing occurs in the case of the Persian quilt in Illustration70.
larger image17. CHAIN-STITCH SAMPLER.
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17. CHAIN-STITCH SAMPLER.
larger image18. CHAIN-STITCH SAMPLER (BACK).
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18. CHAIN-STITCH SAMPLER (BACK).
to work B.
A playful variation upon chain-stitch (B on the sampler, Illustration17) is effected by the use of two threads of different colour. Take in your needle a dark and a light thread, say the dark one to the left, and bring them out at the point at which your work begins. Hold the dark thread under your thumb, and, keeping the light one to the right, well out of the way, draw both threads through; this makes a dark link; the light thread disappears, and comes out again to the left of the dark one, ready to be held under the thumb while you make a light link. This "magic stitch," as it has been called, is no new invention. It is to be found in Persian, Indian, and Italian Renaissance work. An instance of it occurs in Illustration64.
to work C.
A variety of chain-stitch (C on the sampler, Illustration17) used often in church work, more solid in appearance, the links not being so open,is rather differently done. Begin a little in advance of the starting point of your work, hold the thread under your thumb, put the needle in again at the starting point slightly to the left, bring your needle out about ⅛th of an inch below where it first went in but precisely on the same line, and you have the first link of your chain.
to work D.
To work what is known as cable-chain (D on the sampler, Illustration17) keep your thread to the right, put in your needle, pointing downwards, a little below the starting point, and bring it out about ¼th of an inch below where you put it in; then put it through the little stitch just formed, from right to left, hold your thread towards the left under your thumb, put your needle through the stitch now in process of making from right to left, draw up the thread, and the first two links of your chain are made.
to work E.
A zigzag chain, of a rather fancy description, goes by the name of Vandyke chain (E on the sampler, Illustration17). To make it, bring your needle out at a point which is to be the left edge of your work, and make a slanting chain-stitch from left to right; then, putting your needle into that, make another slanting stitch, this time from right to left—and so to and fro to the end.
to work F.
The braid-stitch shown at F on the sampler (Illustration17) is worked as follows, horizontally from right to left. Bring your needle out at a point which is to be the lower edge of your work,throw your thread round to the left, and, keeping it all the time loosely under your thumb, put your needle under the thread and twist it once round to the right. Then, at the upper edge of your work, put in the needle and slide the thread towards the right, bring the needle out exactly below where you put it in, carry your thread under the needle towards the left, draw the thread tight, and your first stitch is done.