Date: Sunday f 20, 2012
Embroidery Crewel Stitches
For work in the hand, Crewel-Stitch is 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.
11. CREWEL-STITCH SAMPLER.
12. CREWEL-STITCH SAMPLER (BACK).
Crewel-Stitch proper 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 eighth 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 (Illustration 12).
The working of B on crewel-stitch sampler.
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.
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 eighth of an 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 eighth of an inch in front of, and bringing it out eighth of an inch behind, the last stitch, so as to have always a quarter of an inch of the stuff on your needle.
The working of G on crewel-stitch sampler.
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.
In Back-Stitch (E), instead of first bringing the needle out at the point where the embroidery is to begin, you bring it out eighth of an inch in advance of it. Then, putting your needle back, you take up this eighth together with another eighth 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 the Spots (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, then bring 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.
13. CREWEL WORK AND CREWEL-STITCH.
You begin Stem-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 eighth 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 (Illustration 12) the stitches lie in a slanting direction.
To work wider Stem-Stitch (H). After the first two stitches, bring your needle out precisely above and in a line with them, and put it in again eighth 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 (Illustration 12) are only two-thirds of the length of those on the face.
Crewel and Outline Stitches worked (J) side by side give somewhat the effect of a braid. The importance of not confusing them, already referred to, is here apparent.
Crewel-Stitch is worked SOLID in the heart-shape in the centre of the sampler. On the left side the rows of stitching follow the outline of the heart, on the right they are more upright, merely conforming a little to the shape to be filled. This is the better method.
14. CREWEL WORK IN VARIOUS STITCHES.
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 Illustration 13. 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, 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.
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 of work 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 Illustration 13 was 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 they got 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 Illustration 14. 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.
Beautiful back-stitching occurs in the Italian work, and the stitch is used for sewing down the applique.
Related Products And Free Videos
Hobbies Crafts Articles
Embroidery Interlacings Surface Stitches And Diapers
... exercise of considerable taste in the choice of simpler or more elaborate patterns, freer or more geometric. Many a time the shape of the space to be filled, as well as its extent, will suggest the appropriate ornament. The diaper design is not, of course, drawn on the stuff, but points of guidance may ...
Embroidery Tools A Word To The Worker
... fine tarlatan (leno muslin will do for very coarse work), and, having laid this down upon the stuff, to go over the lines again with a ruling pen and Indian ink or colour. On a light stuff it is possible to use, instead of a pen, a hard pencil. On a dark material one must use Chinese white, to which it ...
... of many a conference between us. The description of the way the stitches are worked, and so forth, is my rendering of her description, supplemented by practical demonstration with the needle. She has primed me with technical information, and been always at hand to keep me from technical error. With reference ...
... the bedroom of Louis XIV. the work upon which occupied three years. The subject was the Triumph of Venus. In South Kensington Museum there is a fourteenth century linen cloth of German workmanship, upon which occurs the legend of the unicorn, running for protection to a maiden. An old Bestiary describes ...
Embroidery Buttonhole Stitches
... rectangular shape. 24. BUTTONHOLE, CHAIN, AND KNOT STITCHES. In the solid work shown at J, you make five buttonhole-stitches, gathering them to a point at the base, then another five, and so on. Repeat the process, this time point upwards, ...
... 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 ...
... it has been largely used, and abused indeed, in England. Tambour work, when once you have the trick of it, is very quickly done in about one-sixth of the time it would take to do it with the needle. It has the further advantage that it serves equally well for embroidery on a light or on a heavy stuff, ...
... threads at a time with double stitches, very obvious in the illustration. Over the couched silver threads which form the main rib of the leaf a pattern is stitched in silk. A propos of couching, mention must be made of a way of working used in the famous Syon Cope by way of background, and figured overleaf ...
... 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 ...
Embroidery Direction Of The Stitch Stitches
... embroidery, giving as it does the roundness of the birds' bodies but no hint of actual feathering, such as you find in the bird in Illustration 85. There, every stitch helps to explain the feathering. By a discreet use of what I must persist in calling the same stitch (that is, satin-stitch and the variety ...
... veritable flower garden, the embroidress will not forget, to use the happy phrase of William Morris, that she is gardening with silks and gold threads. Let the needleworker study the work of the needle in preference to that of the brush, let her aim at what stuff and threads will give her, and give more ...
Embroidery Embroidery In Relief Stitching Stitch
... 66. RAISED WORK SAMPLER. In sprig F the underlay is of cardboard, pasted on to the linen. It is worked over with purse silk, to and fro across the forms, and sewn down at the margin with finer silk. This is a method of work often employed when gold thread is used. In sprig G the underlay or stuffing is ...
Embroidery Embroidery Materials
... done on it. If you are going to spend the time you must spend to do good work, it is worth while using good stuff, foolish to use anything else. The stuff need not be costly, but it should be the best of its kind, and it should be chosen with reference to the work to be done on it, and vice versa. A mean ...
Embroidery Feather And Oriental Stitches
... or farther apart according to the effect to be produced. It owes its name, of course, to the more or less feathery effect resulting from its rather open character. Like buttonhole, it may be worked solid, as in the leaf and petal forms on the sampler, Illustration 25, but it is better suited to cover ...
Embroidery Figure Embroidery Stitches
... modification than other forms of life. Animals, for instance, lend themselves more readily to it, and so do birds, fur and feathers are obviously translatable into stitches. Leaves and flowers accommodate themselves perhaps better still, but each is best when it is only the motive, not the model, of design. ...
Embroidery Herring Bone Stitches
... Illustration 20) you have always a long stitch from left to right, crossed by a shorter stitch which goes from right to left. Having made a half stitch, bring the needle out at the beginning of the line to be worked, at the lower edge, and put it in eighth of an inch from the beginning of the upper edge. ...
... invented to deform rather than adorn their persons. Who can behold without indignation their long pointed shoes, their caps with feathers, their hair twisted and hanging down like tails,... their bellies so cruelly squeezed with cords that they suffer as much pain from vanity as the martyrs suffered for ...
Embroidery Inlay Mosaic Cut Work Pattern Patternwork
... could not get detail small enough by means of glazing, had recourse to painting to help him out. But there is danger in calling in auxiliaries. It is best to design with a view to the method of work to be employed, and to keep within its limits. To worry the surface of applied, inlaid, or cut stuff with ...
... 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, (silk or gold), thread ...
Embroidery One Stitch Or Many Stitches
... satin-stitch are used together again, each for its specific purpose. The harmony between applique work and couching or chain-stitch outline has been alluded to already. A danger to be kept in view when working in one stitch only is, lest it should look like a woven textile, as it might if very evenly ...
Embroidery Plea For Simplicity
... needlework we admire, which yet are not worth our doing, such, for example, as the all-over work, which does not amount to more than simple diaper, and which really is not so much embroidering on a textile as converting it into one of another kind. Glorified instances of this kind of work occur in the ...
Embroidery Quilting Stitches Stitching
... there is a layer of something soft. If, now, you keep down the groundwork of your design by comparatively frequent stitches diapering it, you get a pattern in relief, more or less, according to the substance of your padding. Another way is to pad the pattern only, as in Illustration 70, where the padding ...
Embroidery Rope And Knot Stitches
... bring it out just below and in a line with where it went in, lastly, keep the needle above the loose end of the thread, draw it through, tightening the thread upwards, and you have the first of your knots, the rest follow at intervals determined by your wants. The more open stitch at D is practically ...
Embroidery Satin Stitch And Its Offshoots
... begin in the centre of the space and work from left to right. That half done, begin again in the centre and work from right to left. In order to make sure of a crisp and even edge to your forms, always let the needle enter the stuff there, as it is not easy to find the point you want from the back. In ...
... employed, that is partly a personal matter, partly a question of what is to be done. The stitch must be adapted to the kind of shading, or the shading must be designed to suit the stitch. It makes all the difference in the world, whether your shading is deliberately done, or whether one shade is meant ...
... extensively used. He says, "When gold is embroidered on a garment which is worn out, and no longer fit for use, the cloth is burnt over the fire in earthen pots. The ashes are thrown into water, and quicksilver added to them. This collects all particles of gold, and unites with them. The water is then ...
Embroidery Stitch Groups Stitches
... group them for herself, say, into stitches suited (1) to line work, (2) to all-over work, (3) to shading, and so on. These she might again subdivide. Of line stitches, for example, some are best suited for straight lines, others for curved, some for broad lines, others for narrow, some for even lines, ...
... adopted and modified by Europeans. In 1295 St. Paul's in London owned a hanging "patterned with wheels and two-headed birds." Sicilian silks, and many others of the contemporary textiles, display variations of the "tree of life" pattern. This consists of a little conventional shrub, sometimes hardly more ...
... in his "History of the Reformation," makes mention of many "private men's parlours" which "were hung with altar cloths, and their tables and beds covered with copes instead of carpetts and coverlids." Katherine of Aragon, while the wife of Henry VIII., consoled herself in her unsatisfactory life by needlework, ...
... camora. Velvet and satin were of later date, not occurring until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Baudekin, a good silk and golden weave, was very popular. Cut velvets with elaborate patterns were made in Genoa. The process consisted in leaving the main ground in the original fine rib which resulted ...