PATTERN DESIGNING
The Difficulties of Pattern Making--A Stock-in-Trade--Some
Principles upon which Patterns are Built Up--Spacing-Out--Nature and
Convention--Shading--Figure Work--Limitations--Colour.
A beginner sometimes experiences difficulty in preparing her own
patterns. A designer needs a wide knowledge of many subjects, which
necessitates much time being given to study; also drawing ability is
necessary to enable the worker to set down her ideas upon paper. For
much simple and pretty work, however, a slight acquaintance with drawing
and design is sufficient, and any one who can master the requisite
stitches can also acquire some knowledge of these two subjects.
The word design frightens some who do not know quite what it means or
entails. Perhaps they do not realise that the design has already been
begun when the object to be worked has been settled, and the material,
thread, and stitches have been decided upon--the rest comes in much the
same way, partly by a system of choice; as it is necessary to know what
materials there are which can be used, so must the chief varieties of
pattern be known from which choice can be made. All patterns are built
up on some fundamental plan, of which the number is comparatively small.
The ability to choose, plan, and arrange is in a greater or less degree
inherent in every one, so there should be, after all, no great
difficulty in the design. The necessary underlying qualities are--a nice
taste, freedom from affectation, an eye for colour and form, and, it
might be added, a fair share of common sense.
A pattern maker requires some stock-in-trade, and it is wise to collect
together a store of some well-classified design material of ascertained
value, ready to be drawn upon when required. A good knowledge of plants
and flowers is very necessary. This is best acquired by making careful
drawings from nature. In choosing flowers for embroidery purposes, the
best-known ones, such as the daisy, rose, or carnation, give more
pleasure to the observer than rare unrecognisable varieties. Figures,
birds, beasts, and such things as inscriptions, monograms, shields of
arms and emblems, all demand study and drawing, both from miscellaneous
examples and from embroideries.
The treatment of all these should be studied in old work, in order that
the curious conventions and all kinds of amusing and interesting ideas
that have gradually grown up in the past may still be made use of and
added to, instead of being cast aside in a wild endeavour after
something original. The student who collects a supply of the foregoing
materials will find she has considerably widened her knowledge during
the process, and is better prepared to make designs.
In making a pattern the first thing to be decided upon is some main
idea, the detail that is to carry it out must then be considered. This
latter may be of various types, such as flowers, foliage, figures,
animals, geometrical forms, interlacing strapwork, quatrefoils, &c.,
&c.; perhaps several of these _motifs_ may be combined together in the
same design.
[Illustration: Fig. 10.]
One of the simplest plans upon which a pattern can be arranged is that
of some form recurring at regular intervals over the surface. The
principle involved is repetition; an example of it is shown at fig. 10.
The form that is used here is a sprig of flower, but the repeating
element admits of infinite variation, it may be anything from a dot to
an angel.
[Illustration: Fig. 11.]
Copes and chasubles, bedspreads and curtains, are often to be seen
decorated with some repeating form. Fig. 11 shows in outline a
conventional sprig that is repeated in this fashion over the surface of
a famous cope in Ely Cathedral. Fig. 12 is an example of a sprig of
flower taken from a XVIIth century embroidered curtain; similar bunches,
but composed of different flowers, recur at intervals over this hanging.
It may interest the practical worker to know what are the different
stitches used upon this figure. The petals of the top flower are in
chain stitch in gradated colouring, the centre is an open crossing of
chain surrounded by stamens in stem stitch in varied colour, the
outermost leaves are outlined in stem stitch with an open filling of
little crossed stitches. The petals of the lower flower are worked
similarly, and the centre is carried out in chain stitch and French
knots. The leaves are filled in with ingenious variations of these
stitches.
[Illustration: Fig. 12.]
The repeating element is perhaps a symbolical figure, a heraldic shield,
or it may be some geometrical form that supplies the motive. Fig. 13 is
a conventional sprig of hawthorn that ornaments in this way an altar
frontal at Zanthen. It is by no means necessary that the element which
repeats should be always identical; so long as it is similar in size,
form, and general character it will probably be the more interesting if
variety is introduced.
The principle of repetition is again found in fig. 14, but with an
additional feature; a sprig of flower is used, with the further
introduction of diagonal lines, expressed by leaf sprays, which are
arranged so as to surround each flower and divide it from the adjoining
ones.
[Illustration: Fig. 13.]
It is advisable to space out the required surface in some way before
commencing to draw out a pattern; for carrying out fig. 14 it would be
well to pencil out the surface as in fig. 15; a connection between these
two will be perceived at a glance. This spacing-out of the required
surface in one way or another is of great assistance, and may even prove
suggestive in the planning of the design. It helps the regularity of the
work, and order is essential in design as in most other things in life.
[Illustration: Fig. 14.]
Another very usual expedient is that of introducing a main central form,
with others branching out on either side and symmetrically balancing
each other. An example of this is given in fig. 16. The symmetry may be
much more free than this; a tree is symmetrical taken as a whole, but
the two sides do not exactly repeat each other.
[Illustration: Fig. 15.]
A plan very commonly employed is that of radiating main lines all
diverging from one central point. Fig. 17 shows a design following this
principle; there is infinite variety in the ways in which this may be
carried out.
[Illustration: Fig. 16.]
[Illustration: Fig. 17.]
Another method would be to plan a continuous flowing line with forms
branching out on one side or on both. Figs. 18 and 19 are border
designs, for which purpose this arrangement is often used, though it can
also well form an all-over pattern; sometimes these lines used over a
surface are made to cross each other, tartan wise, by running in two
directions, producing an apparently complicated design by very simple
means.
[Illustration: Figs. 18 and 19.]
[Illustration: Fig. 20.]
Designs may be planned on the counterchange principle. This is a system
of mass designing that involves the problem of making a pattern out of
one shape, continually repeated, and fitting into itself in such a way
as to leave no interstices. The simplest example of this is to be found
in the chess board, and it will easily be seen that a great number of
shapes might be used instead of the square. Fig. 20 is an example of a
counterchange design carried out in inlay; for this method of work
counterchange is very suitable. On reference to the chapter upon this
work another example will be found (page 181). Fig. 21 illustrates the
same principle, further complicated by the repetition of the form in
three directions instead of in two only.
[Illustration: Fig. 21.]
A method of further enriching a straightforward pattern, covering a
plain surface, is to work a subsidiary pattern upon the background. This
is usually of a monotonous and formal character in order not to clash
with the primary decoration, though this relationship may sometimes be
found reversed. It has the appearance of being some decoration belonging
to the ground rather than to the primary pattern; in its simplest form
it appears as a mere repeating dot or a lattice (see fig. 22), but it
may be so elaborated as to cover with an intricate design every portion
of the exposed ground not decorated with the main pattern.
Many other distinct kinds of work might be mentioned, such as needlework
pictures, the story-telling embroideries that can be made so
particularly attractive. Embroidered landscapes, formal gardens,
mysterious woods, views of towns and palaces, are, if rightly treated,
very fine. In order to learn the way to work such subjects we must go to
the XVIth and XVIIth century _petit point_ pictures, and to the detail
in fine tapestries. The wrong method of going to work is to imitate the
effect sought after by the painter.
[Illustration: Fig. 22.]
It is a mistake in embroidery design to be too naturalistic. In painting
it may be the especial aim to exactly imitate nature, but here are
wanted embroidery flowers, animals and figures, possessing the character
and likeness of the things represented, but in no way trying to make us
believe that they are real. The semblance of a bumble bee crawling upon
the tea cloth gives a hardly pleasant sensation and much savours of
the practical joke, which is seldom in good taste; the needle, however,
adds convention to almost anything, and will usually manage the bee all
right unless the worker goes out of the way to add a shadow and a high
light. Such things as perspective, light and shade or modelling of form,
should all be very much simplified if not avoided, for embroidery
conforms to the requirements of decoration and must not falsify the
surface that it ornaments. Shading is made use of in order to give more
variety to, and exhibit the beauty of, colour by means of gradation, to
explain more clearly the design, and so on; it is not employed for the
purpose of fixing the lighting of the composition from one point by
means of systematically adjusted light and shade, or of making a form
stand out so realistically as to almost project from the background.
In avoiding too much resemblance to natural forms it is not necessary to
make things ugly; a conventional flower implies no unmeaning
straightness or impossible curve, it may keep all its interesting
characteristics, but it has to obey other requirements specially
necessary in the particular design. Another point to be noted is that,
since there is freedom of choice of flowers and other objects, only
those perfect and well-formed should be chosen; all accidents of growth
and disease may, happily, be omitted; if anything of this kind is put in
it helps to give the naturalistic look which is to be avoided. Both
sides of a leaf should match, though it may happen in nature, through
misfortune, that one is deformed and small.
In figure work, which, though ambitious, is one of the most interesting
kinds of embroidery, the figures, like all other things, must be treated
with a certain amount of simplicity; very little attempt must be made to
obtain flesh tones, roundness of form, perspective, or foreshortening.
The work should be just sufficiently near to nature to be a good
embroidery rendering of it. However, without overstepping the limits
there is a great deal that may be expressed, such things as character,
gesture, grace, colour, and so on, matters which are after all of first
importance. Detail, if of the right kind, may be filled in, but it is
wrong to attempt what is to the craft very laborious to obtain, for
this would be misdirected energy, which is great waste. A right use of
the figure can be seen in the XIIIth century embroidery pictures, which,
covering mediæval church vestments, often display episodes from the
lives of the saints. These are some of the masterpieces of the art of
embroidery; observation of nature is carried to a marvellous pitch, but
the execution never sinks into commonplace realism.
Certain restrictions are always present, in making a design, that must
be conformed to, such as, the limit of space, the materials with which
the work is to be carried out, the use to which it will be put, and so
on. These, instead of being difficulties, can afford help in the way of
suggestion and limitation. A bad design may look as if it obeyed them
unwillingly--a form is perhaps cramped, perhaps stretched out in order
to fit its place, instead of looking as if it naturally fitted it
whether the confining lines were there or not. In the early herbals,
illustrated with woodcuts, examples can be found over and over again of
a flower filling a required space simply and well; fig. 23 is taken from
the herbal of Carolus Clusius, printed at Antwerp in 1601 by the great
house of Plantin. The draughtsman in this case had to draw a plant to
fit a standard-sized engraver's block, and he had a certain number of
facts to tell about it; he drew the plant as simply and
straightforwardly as possible, making good use of all the available
space, the result being a well-planned and balanced piece of work, with
no affectation or unnecessary lines about it.
[Illustration: Fig. 23.]
Fine colour is a quality appreciated at first sight, though often
unconsciously. It is a difficult subject to speak of very definitely; an
eye for colour is natural to some, but in any case the faculty can be
cultivated and developed. By way of studying the subject, we can go to
nature and learn as much as we are capable of appreciating; even such
things as butterflies, shells, and birds' eggs are suggestive. Again,
embroideries, illuminated manuscripts, pictures, painted decoration, may
be studied, and so on; in fact, colour is so universal that it is not
possible to get away from it. Unfortunately we are sometimes forced to
learn what to avoid as well as what to emulate.
Colour is entirely relative, that is to say it depends upon its
immediate surroundings for what it appears to be. Also it has effects
varying with the material which it dyes; wool is of an absorbent nature,
whereas silk has powers of reflection. It is a safe plan to use true
colours, real blue, red or green, not slate, terra cotta, and olive.
Gold, silver, white and black, are valuable additions to the colour
palette; it should be remembered about the former that precious things
must be used with economy or they become cheap and perhaps vulgar.
[Illustration: Fig. 24.]
For getting satisfactory colour there is a useful method which can at
times be made use of; this is to stitch it down in alternate lines of
two different tints, which, seen together at a little distance, give the
desired effect. Backgrounds can be covered over with some small
geometrical pattern carried out in this way, such as is shown in fig.
24, perhaps using in alternation bright blue and black instead of a
single medium tint of blue all over. At a slight distance the tone may
be the same in either case, but this method gives a pleasantly varied
and refined effect, which avoids muddiness, and shows up the pattern
better. This same method is used for expressing form more clearly as
well as for colour; waves of hair, for instance, are much more clearly
expressed when worked in this way.