Date: Sunday f 20, 2012
Embroidery One Stitch Or Many Stitches
The first thing to be settled with regard to the choice of stitch is whether to employ one stitch throughout, or a variety of stitches.
Much will depend upon the effect desired. Good work has been done in either way, but one may safely say, in the first place, that it is as well not to introduce variety of stitch without good cause there is safety in simplicity and in the second, that stitches should be chosen to go together, in order that the work may look all of a piece. When the various stitches are well chosen, it is difficult at a glance to distinguish one from another.
A great variety of stitches in one piece of work is worrying, if not bewildering. It is as well not to use too many, to keep in the main to one or two, but not to be afraid of using a third, or a fourth, to do what the stitch or stitches mainly relied upon cannot do.
72. STITCHES IN COMBINATION.
It tends also towards simplicity of effect if you use your stitches with some system, not haphazard, and in subordination one to the other, there must be no quarrelling among them for superiority. You should determine, that is to say, at the outset, which stitch shall be employed for filling, which for outline, or which for stalks, which for leaves, and which for flowers.
Or, supposing you adopt one general stitch throughout, and introduce others, you should know why, and make up your mind to employ your second for emphasis of form, your third for contrast of texture, or for some other quite definite purpose.
It is not possible here to point out in detail the system on which the various examples illustrated have been worked, the reader must worry that out for herself. But one may just point out in passing how well the various stitches go together in some few instances.
Nothing could be more harmonious, for example, than the combination of knot, chain, and buttonhole stitches or of ladder, Oriental, herring-bone, and other stitches in Illustration 72. Again, the contrast between satin-stitch in the bird and couched cord for the clouding is most judicious, as is the knotting of the bird's crest.
Laid floss contrasts, again, admirably with couched gold, and satin-stitch with couching, where the gold is reserved mainly for outline, but on occasion serves to emphasise a detail.
73. FINE NEEDLEWORK UPON LINEN.
Couched gold and surface 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 worked. Some kinds of embroidery seem hardly worth doing nowadays, because they suggest the loom. That may be a reason for some complexity of stitch, in which lurks that other danger of losing simplicity and breadth.
The lace-like appearance of the needlework upon fine linen in Illustration 73, results chiefly from the extraordinary delicacy with which it is done, but it owes something also to the variety of stitch and of stitch-pattern employed in it.
OUTLINE.
The use of outline in embroidery hardly needs pointing out. It is often the obvious way of defining a pattern, as, for example, where there is only a faint difference in depth of tint between the pattern and its background, in applique work it is necessary to mask the joins, and it is by itself a delightful means of diapering a surface with not too obtrusive pattern.
Allusion to the stitches suitable to outline has been made already (see stitch-groups), as well as to the colour of outlining, a propos of applique. It is difficult to overrate the importance of this question of colour in the case of outline, but there are no rules to be laid down, except that a coloured outline is nearly always preferable to a black one.
The Germans of the 16th century were given to indulging in black outlines, and you may see in their work how it hardened the effect, whereas a coloured outline may define without harshness. The Spaniards, on the other hand, realised the value of colour, and would, for example, outline gold and silver upon a dark green ground in red, with admirable effect. A double outline, for which there is often opportunity in bold work, may be turned to good account.
Among the successful combinations which come to mind is an applique pattern in yellow and white upon dark green, outlined first with gold cord, and then, next the green, with a paler and brighter green. Another is a pattern chiefly in yellow upon purple, outlined first with yellow couched with gold, and next the ground with silver. In the case of couched cord or gold, the colour of the stitching counts also.
Stitches from the edge of a leaf or what not, inwards, alternately long and short, though they form an edge to the leaf, are not properly outlining. This is rather a stopping short of solid work than outlining, though it often goes by that name.
The first condition of a good outline stitch is that it should be, as it were, supple, so as to follow the flow of the form. At the same time it should be firm. Fancy stitches look fussy, and a spikey outline is worse than none at all.
There is absolutely no substantial ground for the theory that outlines should be worked in a stitch not used elsewhere in the work. On the contrary, it is a good rule not to introduce extra stitches into the work unless they give something which the stitches already employed will not give. The simplest way is always safest.
An outline affords a ready means of clearing up edges, but it should not be looked upon merely as a device for the disguise of slovenliness. Unless the colour scheme should necessitate an outline, an embroidress, sure of her skill, will often prefer not to outline her work, and to get even the drawing lines within the pattern, by VOIDING. She will leave, that is to say, a line of ground-stuff clear between the petals of her flowers, or what not, which line, by the way, should be narrower than it is meant to appear, as it looks always broader than it is.
It is more difficult, it must be owned, thus to work along two sides of a line of ground-stuff than to work a single line of stitching, but it is within the compass of any skilled worker, and skilled workers have delighted in voiding even when their work was on a small scale necessitating fine lines of voiding.
In work on a bold scale there is no difficulty about it, and it would be remarkable that it is so seldom used, were it not that the uncertain worker likes to have a chance of clearing up ragged edges, and that voiding implies a broader and more dignified treatment of design than it is the fashion to affect.
Related Products And Free Videos
Hobbies Crafts Articles
Embroidery Interlacings Surface Stitches And Diapers
... threads carried from one side to the other, they are laced together by lines looped round them. The band at L is begun by making horizontal bar stitches. A row of crewel-stitch and one of outline-stitch, worked on to the bars, and not into the stuff, makes the central chain. The band at K is merely surface ...
Embroidery Tools A Word To The Worker
... as it is possible to get it. A rather more daring plan is to damp the back of the stuff with a wet sponge. The work, instead of being nailed on to a board, may just as well be laced to a frame by the tape. In the case of raised embroidery there must be between it and the wood, not a cloth merely, but ...
... do. It is illustrated by samplers of stitches by diagrams, to explain the way stitches are done, and by examples of old and modern work, to show the artistic application of the stitches. A feature is the series of samplers designed to show not only what are the available stitches, but the groups into ...
... chamber adorned with gold and needlework must have been fairly regal. An embroiderer named Delobel made a set of furnishings for 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 ...
Embroidery Buttonhole Stitches
... back to back, leaf forms may be fairly expressed. In the leaves on the sampler, the edge of the stitch is used to emphasise the mid rib, leaving a serrated edge to the leaves. The character of the stitch would have been better preserved by working the other way about, and marking the edge of the leaves ...
... 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 tesserae will pronounce themselves, and spoil it.
...
... your chain are made. A zigzag chain, of a rather fancy description, goes by the name of Vandyke chain (E on the sampler, Illustration 17). 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 ...
... 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 ...
... 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 ...
... 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, ...
Embroidery Direction Of The Stitch Stitches
... which you see is merely the effect of light upon it. The horizontal stitches, as it happens, catch the light, the vertical ones do not. Had the light come from a different point, the effect might have been reversed. If there had been diagonal stitches from right to left, they would have given a third ...
... see, not only what is worth doing, but what is not. That, each must judge for herself. For my part, it seems to me the thing best worth doing is ornament. Any way, this much is certain (and you have only to go to a museum to prove it), that there is no need for needleworkers, unless their instinct draws ...
Embroidery Embroidery In Relief Stitching Stitch
... 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 of string, sewn down with stitches always in the direction of the ...
Embroidery Embroidery Materials
... Serge, if not too loose, may serve for curtains and the like, but it is not so well worth working upon. Felt is beneath contempt. The nobler the material, the more essential it is that it should be of the best. Poor satin is not "good enough to work on," it looks poorer than ever when it is embroidered. ...
Embroidery Feather And Oriental Stitches
... Make a chain-stitch slanting downwards from line 1 to line 2. Put your needle into line 3 about .th of an inch lower down, and, slanting it upwards, bring it out on line 4 level with the point where you last brought it out. Make a chain-stitch slanting downwards this time from right to left, and bring ...
Embroidery Figure Embroidery Stitches
... and it is a poor-spirited embroidress who will thus confess her weakness and call on painting to help her out. It does not even do that, it fails absolutely to produce the desired effect. The painting quarrels with the stitching, and there is after all no semblance of that unity which is the very essence ...
Embroidery Herring Bone Stitches
... beginning of the upper edge, and bring it out at the beginning of the lower one. Thence take a long slanting stitch upwards from left to right, bring the needle out on the lower edge immediately opposite, cross it by a rather shorter stitch from right to left, entering the stuff at the point where the ...
... recommended this work as most durable and satisfactory, it is oftenest associated with church embroidery. A simple applique was also done by cutting out pieces of one material and applying them to another, hiding the edge-joinings by couching on a cord. As an improvement upon painted banners to be used ...
Embroidery Inlay Mosaic Cut Work Pattern Patternwork
... stuff a sheet of glass, and with a very sharp knife (kept sharp by an oilstone at hand) cut out the pattern. What was cut out of one material has only to be fitted into the other, and sewn together as before, and you have two pieces of inlaid work what is the ground in one forming the pattern in the other, ...
... 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 ...
Embroidery Plea For Simplicity
... artistic value of the less pretentious forms of needlework, and especially of flat ornament, which has, nevertheless, its own very important place in decoration. As for geometric pattern, that is quite beneath consideration it is so mechanical! Mechanical is a word as easily spoken as another, but if ...
Embroidery Quilting Stitches Stitching
... Quilting, where it serves a useful as well as an ornamental purpose. To quilt is to stitch one cloth upon another with something soft between (or without anything between). Our word "counterpane" is derived from "contre-poinct," a corruption of the French word for back-stitch, or "quilting" stitch, as ...
Embroidery Rope And Knot Stitches
... through the slanting stitch just made, draw the thread not too tight, and, keeping it as before under the thumb, put your needle, eye first, this time through the upper half only of the slanting stitch, making a kind of buttonhole-stitch round the last, and draw out your thread. These knotted rope stitches, ...
Embroidery Satin Stitch And Its Offshoots
... 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 ...
... inevitably at gradation of colour in embroidery, the question is how best to get it. But, before mentioning the ways in which it may be got, it seems necessary to protest that shading is not a matter of course. Perfectly beautiful work may be done, and ought more often to be done, in merely flat needlework, ...
... been possible, as Lady Alford suggests, to play the game "Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral" with textiles only! Between silk, hemp, cotton, gold, silver, wool, flax, camel's hair, and asbestos, surely the three elements all played their parts. Since the first record of Eve having "sewn fig leaves together ...
Embroidery Stitch Groups Stitches
... as they do not forget that there are other stitches which might on occasion serve their purpose. Anyway, they should begin by knowing what stitches there are. Until they know, and know too what each can do, they are hardly in a position to determine which of them will best do what they want. Our Samplers ...
... 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 than a "budding rod," with two birds ...
... Dalmatic of Leo III. But Lady Alford claims for this work a greater antiquity. Certainly, as one studies its details, one is convinced that it is not quite a Gothic work, nor yet is it Byzantine, for the figures have all the grace of Greek work prior to the age of Byzantine stiffness. It is embroidered ...
... the late eleventh century a Norman Abbot brought home from Apulia a quantity of heavy and fine silk, from which four copes were made. French silks were not remarkable until the sixteenth century, while those of the Netherlands led all others as early as the thirteenth. Shot silks were popular in England ...