stitches must be very much closer on the inner side of the curve than on
the outside: occasionally a half-stitch may be necessary to keep the
direction of the lines right, in which case the inside end of the
half-stitch must be quite covered by the stitch next following.
[Illustration: 38. SATIN-STITCH IN COARSE TWISTED SILK.]
Satin-stitch is seen at its best when worked in floss. Coarse or twisted
silk looks coarse in this stitch, as may be seen by comparing the petal
D in the sampler, Illustration 36, with the petal in twisted silk here
given (38). Marvellously skilful as are the needle-workers of India
(Illustration 39), they get rather broken lines when they work in thick
twisted silk. The precision of line a skilled worker can get in floss is
wonderful. An Oriental will get sweeping lines as clean and firm as if
they had been drawn with a pen, and this not merely in the case of an
outline, but in voided lines of which each side has to be drawn with the
needle. The voided outline, by the way, as on Illustrations 39, 40, is
not only the frankest way of defining form, but seems peculiarly proper
to satin-stitch; and it is a test of skill in workmanship: it is so easy
to disguise uneven stitching by an outline in some other stitch. The
voiding in the wings of the birds in Illustration 40 is perfect; and the
softening of the voided line, at the start of the wing in one case and
the tail in the other, by cross stitching in threads comparatively wide
apart, is quite the right thing to do. It would have been more in
keeping to void the veins of the lotus leaves than to plant them on in
cord.
Satin-stitch must not be too long, and it is often a serious
consideration with the designer how to break up the surfaces to be
covered so that only shortish stitches need be used. You might follow
the veining of a leaf, for example, and work from vein to vein. But all
leaves are not naturally veined in the most accommodating manner.
Treatment is accordingly necessary, and so we arrive at a convention
appropriate to embroidery of this kind. It takes a draughtsman properly
to express form by stitch distribution. The Chinese convention in the
lotus flowers (Illustration 40) is admirable.
[Illustration: 39. SATIN-STITCH IN FINE TWISTED SILK.]
It is the rule of the game to lay satin-stitch very evenly. Worked in
floss, the mere surface of satin-stitch is beautiful. A further charm
lies in the way it lends itself to gradation of colour. Beautiful
results may be obtained by the use of perfectly flat tints of colour, as
in Illustration 40; but the subtlest as well as the most deliberate
gradation of tint may be most perfectly rendered in satin-stitch.
[Sidenote: TO WORK SURFACE SATIN-STITCH.]
SURFACE SATIN-STITCH (not the same on both sides), though it looks very
much like ordinary satin-stitch, is worked in another way. The needle,
that is to say, after each stitch is brought _immediately_ up again, and
the silk is carried back on the upper instead of the under side of the
stuff. Considerable economy of silk is effected by thus keeping the
thread as much as possible on the surface, but the effect is apt to be
proportionately poorer. Moreover, the work is not so lasting as when it
is solid. The satin-stitch on Illustration 58 is all surface work. It
looks loose, which it is always apt to do, unless it is kept stretched
on the frame, on which, of course, satin-stitch is for the most part
worked. Very effective Indian work is done of this kind--loose and
flimsy, but serving a distinct artistic purpose. It is to embroidery of
more serious kind what scene painting is to mural decoration.
[Illustration: 40. CHINESE SATIN-STITCH.]
Embroidery is often described as being in "long-and-short-stitch," a
term properly descriptive not of a stitch, but of its dimensions.
Whether you use stitches of equal or of unequal length is a question
merely of the adaptation of the stitch to its use in any given instance;
there is nothing gained by calling an arrangement of alternating
stitches, "long and short," or by calling them "plumage-stitch," or,
which is more misleading, "feather-stitch," when they radiate so as to
follow the form, say, of a bird's breast. The bodies of the birds in
Illustrations 40 and 85 are in plumage-stitch so called. This adaptation
of stitch to bird or other forms gives the effect of fine feathering
perfectly. But why apply the term "satin-stitch" exclusively to parallel
lines of stitches all of a length?
"Long-and-short-stitch," then, is a sort of satin-stitch; only, instead
of the stitches being all of equal length, they are worked one _into_
the others or _between_ them, as in the faces in Illustrations 79 and
80.
A little further removed from satin-stitch is what is known as
"split-stitch," in which the needle is brought up _through_ the
foregoing stitch, and splits it. The way of working this stitch is more
fully given on page 105.
The worker adapts, as a matter of course, the length of the stitch to
the work to be done, directing it also according to the form to be
expressed, and so arrives, almost before he is aware of it, by way of
satin-stitch, at what is called plumage-stitch.
[Illustration: 41. OFFSHOOTS FROM SATIN AND CREWEL STITCHES.]
[Illustration: 42. OFFSHOOTS FROM SATIN AND CREWEL STITCHES (BACK).]
The distinction between the stitches so far described is plain
enough, and an all-round embroidress learns to work them; but workers
end in working their own way, modifying the stitch according to the work
it is put to do, and produce results which it would be difficult to
describe and pedantic to find fault with. Even short, however, of such
individual treatment, the mere adaptation of the stitch to the lines of
the design removes it from the normal. It makes a difference, too,
whether it is worked in a frame or in the hand: in the one case you see
more likeness to one stitch, in the other to another. The flower at B,
for example, and the leaf at D, on the sampler, Illustration 41, are
both worked in what is commonly called "plumage," or "embroidery"
stitch, though the term "dovetail," sometimes used, seems to describe it
better. Instance B, however, is worked in the hand, and D in a
frame--from which very fact it follows that the worker is naturally
disposed to regard B as akin to crewel-stitch and D to satin-stitch,
between which two stitches "dovetail" may be regarded as the connecting
link.
[Illustration: THE WORKING OF B ON SAMPLER 41.]
[Sidenote: TO WORK B, 41.]
The petals at B are worked in the method illustrated in the diagram
overleaf. The first step is to edge the shape with satin-stitches in
threes, successively long, shorter, and quite short. This done, starting
at the base again, you put your needle in on the upper or right side of
the first short stitch, and bring it out through the long stitch (as
shown in the diagram). You then make a short stitch by putting your
needle downwards through the material, and taking up a small piece of
it. You have finally only to draw the needle through, and it is in
position to make another long stitch. As the concentric rings of
stitching become smaller, you make, of course, shorter stitches, and you
need no longer pierce the thread of the long stitch.
[Sidenote: TO WORK D, 41.]
The working of the scroll at D on the sampler, Illustration 41, needs no
detailed explanation. Anyone who is acquainted with the way satin-stitch
is worked (it has already been sufficiently explained), and has read the
above account of the working of B, will understand at once how that is
worked in the frame.
It will be seen that there is a slight difference in effect between the
two, arising from the fact that work done in the hand is necessarily
more loosely and not quite so evenly done as that on a frame.
[Sidenote: TO WORK SPLIT-STITCH C, 41.]
Split-stitch (C on the sampler), again, resembles either crewel-stitch
or satin-stitch, according as it is worked in the hand or on a frame. In
working in the hand, you take a rather shorter stitch back than in
crewel-stitch, piercing with the needle the thread which is to form the
next stitch. In working on a frame, you bring your needle always up
through the last-made satin-stitch in order to start the next. Whichever
way it is done, split-stitch is often difficult to distinguish without
minute examination from chain-stitch. Further reference to its use is
made in the chapter on shading. It may be interesting to compare it with
crewel-stitch (A on the sampler), which is also a favourite stitch for
shading.
DARNING.
It is the peculiarity of DARNING and RUNNING that you make several
stitches at one passing of the needle.
Darning and running amount practically to the same thing. Darning might
be described as consecutive lines of running. The difference is, in the
main, a matter of multiplication; but the distinction is sometimes made
that in running the stitches may be the same length on the face as on
the reverse of the stuff, whereas in darning the thread is mainly on the
surface, only dipping for the space of a single thread or so below it.
It results from the way of working that you get in darning an
interrupted line characteristic of the stitch. What is called "double
darning," by which the breaks in the single darning are made good, has
in effect no character of darning whatever.
Darning has a homely sound, but it is useful for more than mending. In
embroidery you no longer use it to replace threads worn away, but build
up upon the scaffolding of a merely serviceable material what may be a
gorgeous design in silk.
[Illustration: 43. DARNING SAMPLER.]
Darning is worked, of course, in rows backwards and forwards; but if the
stitches are long and in the direction of the weft, it is as well not to
run the returning row next to the one just done, but to leave space for
a second course of darning afterwards between the open rows.
The darning of the sampler, Illustration 43, is very simple. The flower
is darned in stitches of fairly equal length, taking up one thread of
the material, and covering a space of almost a quarter of an inch before
taking up the next thread. The outline of a petal is first worked, and
successive rows of darning follow the lines of the flower, expressing to
some extent its form. Much depends upon the direction of the stitch.
The texture of the work depends upon the length of the stitches, and on
the amount of the stuff showing through.
Darning is usually supplemented by outlining. The sampler is designed to
show how far one can dispense with it. The flower stalk is defined by
darning the first row in a darker colour; for the rest, voiding is
employed, but it is not easy to void in darning.
The background is darned diaper fashion. It gives, that is to say,
deliberately diagonal lines. A background irregularly darned should be
irregular enough never to run into lines not contemplated by the worker.
[Illustration: 44. DARNING DESIGNED BY WILLIAM MORRIS.]
In the case of large leaves, veined, the veining should be worked
first, the stitches between them radiating outwards to the edge of the
leaf.
More accomplished work in darning is shown in the border by William
Morris in Illustration 44, where it appears, however, much flatter than
in the coloured silk. It is worked solid, the radiating stitches
accommodating themselves to the forms of the leaves and petals, which,
in fact, are designed with a view to their execution in this way. They
are defined by outline-stitching--light or dark as occasion seemed to
require.
Mention has already been made of darning _a propos_ of canvas-stitch;
and there is a sort of natural correspondence between the _mecanique_ of
darning in its simplest form and the network of open threads which gives
to rectangular darning, like the German work in Illustration 45,
character which more than compensates for its angularity in outline. The
darning is there quite even in workmanship, but it is, as will be seen,
of different degrees of strength--lighter for the surface of the
pattern, heavier for the outline.
You may qualify the colour of a stuff by lightly darning it with silk of
another shade, and very subtle tints may be got by thus, as it were,
veiling a coloured ground with silks of various hues.
[Illustration: 45. FLAT DARNING UPON A SQUARE MESH.]
LAID-WORK.
The necessity for something like what is called "LAID-WORK" is best
shown by reference to satin-stitch. It was said in reference to it that
satin-stitches should not be too long. There is a great deal of Eastern
work in which surface satin-stitch, or its equivalent, floats so loosely
upon the face of the stuff that it can only be described as flimsy.
Nothing could be more beautiful in its way than certain Soudanese
embroidery, in which coloured floss in stitches an inch or more long
lies glistening on the stuff without any interruption of threads to
fasten it down.
Embroidery of this kind, however, hardly comes within the scope of
practical work. Long, loose stitches want sewing down. Some compromise
has to be made between art and beauty. The problem is to make the work
strong enough without seriously disturbing its lustrous surface, and the
solution of it is "laid-work," at which we arrive thus almost by
necessity.
[Illustration: 46. LAID-WORK SAMPLER.]
It involves no new stitch, but is only another way of using stitches
already described. In laid-work, long tresses of silk, as William Morris
called them, floss by preference, are thrown backwards and forwards
across the face of the stuff, only just piercing it at the edges of the
forms, and back again. These silken tresses are then caught down and
kept, I will not say close to the ground, but in their place upon it, by
lines of stitching in the cross direction.
Laid-work is not, at the best, a very strong or lasting kind of
embroidery (it needs to be carefully covered up even as it is worked),
but by no other means is the silky beauty of coloured floss so perfectly
set forth. It is hardly worth doing in anything but floss.
Laid-work lends itself also to gradation of colour within certain
limits--the limits, that is to say, of the straight parallel lines in
which the silk is laid: the direction of these is determined often by
the lines of sewing which are to cross them. In any case the direction
of the threads is here more than ever important. The sewing down must
take lines and may form patterns.
The sampler, Illustration 46, wants little or no explanation. It
illustrates the various ways of laying. In the leaf the floss is sewn
down with split-stitch, which forms the veining. Elsewhere it is kept in
place by "couching," a process presently to be described. For the
outlines, split-stitch and couching are employed. The last row of laid
work in the grounding is purposely pulled out of the straight by the
couching in order to give a waved edge. The diaper which represents the
seeding of the flower is not, properly speaking, laid-work: single
threads of white purse silk are there couched down with dark.
[Illustration: 47. JAPANESE LAID-WORK.]
For the transverse stitching, for which also it is best to use floss,
either split-stitch may be used, as in the leaf in the sampler,
Illustration 46, or a thread may be laid across and sewn down--couched,
as it is called--as in the flower. The closer the cross lines the
stronger the work, but the less lustrous the effect.
Laid floss may be employed to glorify the entire surface of a linen
material, as in the sampler or for the pattern only upon a ground worth
showing, as in Illustrations 47, 48, 49.
Laid-work will not give anything like modelling, and it is not best
suited to figure design except where it is quite flatly treated. An
instance of its use in figure work occurs on Illustration 79. It is
effective when quite naively and simply used in cross lines which do not
appear to take any account of the forms crossed--as, for example, in
Illustration 47, where the stitching does not pretend to express more
than a flat surface. The floss, however, is there carefully laid at a
different angle of inclination in each petal, so as to give variety of
colour. The lines of sewing vary according to the lines of the laid
floss, but do not cross them at right angles. The important thing is, of
course, that they should catch the laid "tresses" at intervals not too
far apart. If the lines which sew down the floss have also to express
drawing, as in the case of the bird's wings in Illustration 48, the
underlying floss must be laid in lines which they will cross. In the
case of the leaves in the same piece of work, the floss is laid in the
direction in which the leaf grows, and the stitching across, which sews
it down, is slightly curved so as to suggest roundness in them.
[Illustration: 48. INDO-PORTUGUESE LAID-WORK.]
A more finished piece of work is shown in Illustration 49, where the
laid floss crosses the forms, and the sewing down takes very much the
place of veining in the flower, and of ribs in the scroll, expressing
about as much modelling as can be expressed this way, and more, perhaps,
than it is advisable often to attempt.
The sewing down asserts itself most, of course, when it is in a colour
contrasting with the laid floss, as it does in the leaves in the smaller
sampler overleaf.
The stitching down makes usually a pattern more or less conspicuous. On
this same sampler it does so very deliberately in the case of the broad
stalk. The rather sudden variation of the colour shown there in the
leaves is harmless enough in bold work, to which the process is best
suited. One may be too careful in gradating the tints: timidity in this
respect prevails too much among modern needlewomen: an artist in floss
should not want her work to look like a gradated wash of colour. The
Italians of the 16th and 17th centuries (see Illustration 49) were not
afraid of rather abrupt transition in the shades of colour they used for
laid-work.
[Illustration: 49. ITALIAN LAID-WORK.]
[Illustration: 50. LAID SAMPLER.]
When laid floss is kept in place by threads themselves sewn down across
it, such threads are called "couched," and the work itself may be
described as laid and couched. Hence arises some confusion between the
two methods of work--laying and couching. It saves confusion to make a
sharp distinction between the two--using the term "laid" only for
stitches (floss) first loosely laid upon the surface of the stuff and
then sewn down by cross lines of stitching of whatever kind, and
"couched" for the sewing down of cords, &c. (silk or gold), thread by
thread or in pairs. Laid floss is sewn down _en masse_, couched silk in
single or double threads; and accordingly laid answers best for surface
covering, couched for outlining, except in the case of gold, which even
for surface covering is always couched.
COUCHING
COUCHING is the sewing down of one thread by another--as in the outline
of the flower on the laid sampler, Illustration 46. The stitches with
which it is sewn down, thread by thread, or, in the case of gold, two
threads at a time, are best worked from right to left; or, in outlining,
from outside the forms inwards, and a waxed thread is often used for the
purpose. Naturally the cord to be sewn down should be held fairly
tightly in place to keep the line even.
It is usual in couching to sew down the silk or cord with stitches
crossing it at right angles, except in the case of a twisted cord, which
should be sewn down with stitches in the direction of the twist.
Couching is best done in a frame; but it may be done in the hand by
means of buttonhole-stitch.
[Illustration: 51. A. BULLION. B. COUCHED CORD.]
When a surface is covered with couching, as in the seeding of the flower
in the sampler, Illustration 46, the sewing down stitches make a
pattern--all the plainer there, because the stitching is in a
contrasting shade of colour. It is quite permissible to call attention
to the stitching if it suits your artistic purpose. To disguise it by
sewing _through_ the cord is not a workmanlike practice. A worker should
frankly accept a method of work and get character out of it.
Embroidresses have a clever way of untwisting a cord before each stitch
and twisting it again after stitching through it--between the strands,
that is to say, in which the stitching is lost. The device is rather too
clever. It shows a cord with no visible means of attachment to the
ground, which is not desirable, however much desired. There is no
advantage in attaching cords to the surface of silk so that they look as
if they had been glued on to it. Conjuring tricks are highly amusing,
but one does not think very highly of conjurers. Personally, I would
much rather have seen more plainly the way the cord is sewn down in the
graceful cross in Illustration 51, a design perfectly adapted to
couching, and yet unlike the usual thing.
Where it is softish silk which is stitched down, it makes a great
difference whether it is loosely held and tightly sewn, or the contrary.
Contrast the short puffy lines nearest the corners in the sampler,
Illustration 52, with the longer ones between the broad and narrow
bands. The broad band is worked in rows of double filoselle, of various
shades, sewn down with single filoselle. In the narrower bands twisted
silk is sewn down with stitches in the direction of its twist. This is
more plainly seen in the upper of the two bands, where the
sloping stitches are lighter in colour than the cord sewn down.
[Illustration: 52. COUCHING SAMPLER.]
Characteristic use is made of rather puffy couching in the ornament of
the lady's dress in Miss Keighley's panel, Illustration 61, where it has
very much the richness of embroidery in seed pearls.
It was a common practice in Germany in the 16th century to work in solid
couching upon cloth, employing a twisted thread and sewing it with
stitches in the direction of the twist, so that at first sight one does
not recognise it as couching. It looks like rather coarse stitching in
the direction of the forms, and expresses shading very well. The cloth
ground accounts, perhaps, for the choice of method: the material is not
otherwise a pleasant one to embroider upon.
A rather earlier German method was to couch in parallel lines of white
upon white linen, and so get relief and texture but no modelling, though
the drawing was helped by varying the direction of the parallel lines.
The entire surface of a linen ground was sometimes covered with couched
threads of silk or fine wool--some of it in vertical and horizontal
lines, some of it in the direction of the pattern. This, again, was a
German practice, as may be seen in the Hildesheim Cope at South
Kensington.
All-over couching may be used with advantage to renew the ground of
embroidery so worn as to be unsightly; and is more lasting than
laid-work for the purpose. It is laborious to do, but more satisfactory
when done than remounting; and one or the other is a necessity
sometimes. The effect of age is, up to a certain point, pleasing: rags
are not.
[Illustration: 53. COUCHING IN LOOPED THREADS.]
Couching, however (except with gold), was more commonly used for
outlining, and is quite peculiarly suited to give a firm line. A
beautiful example of outline work in coloured silk upon white linen is
pictured in Illustration 90, in which the lines of delicate Renaissance
arabesque are perfectly preserved. The rare practice of such work as
this, notwithstanding its distinction, is perhaps sufficiently accounted
for by its modesty. It is true, it wants well-considered and definitely
drawn design, and there is no possible fudging with it.
[Illustration: 54. REVERSE COUCHING.]
The value of a couched cord as an outline to stitching (satin-stitch in
this instance) is shown in Illustration 91, in which the singularly
well-schemed and well-drawn lines of the ornament are given with
faultless precision. This is a portion of an altogether admirable frame
to an altogether foolish picture in needlework, of which a fragment only
is shown.