Art in Needlework Part 2

[Sidenote: TO WORK A.]

CREWEL-St.i.tCH 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 1/8th of an inch of the stuff, and bring it out through the hole made in starting the st.i.tch, taking care not to pierce the thread. This gives the first half st.i.tch. If you proceed in the same way your next st.i.tch will be full length. The test of good workmans.h.i.+p is that at the back it should look like back-st.i.tch (Ill.u.s.tration 12), described on page 30.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WORKING OF B ON CREWEL-St.i.tCH SAMPLER.]

[Sidenote: TO WORK B.]

OUTLINE-St.i.tCH (B on sampler) differs from crewel-st.i.tch 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 st.i.tch is useful for single lines and for outlining solid work. The muddled effect of much crewel work is due to the confusion of this st.i.tch with crewel-st.i.tch proper.

[Sidenote: TO WORK C.]

THICK CREWEL-St.i.tCH (C on sampler) is only a little wider than ordinary crewel-st.i.tch, but gives a heavier line, in higher relief. In effect it resembles rope-st.i.tch, but it is more simply worked. You begin as in ordinary crewel-st.i.tch, but after the first half-st.i.tch you take up 1/8th of an inch of the material in advance of the last st.i.tch, and bring out your needle at the point where the first half-st.i.tch began.

You proceed, always putting your needle in 1/8th of an inch in front of, and bringing it out 1/8th of an inch behind, the last st.i.tch, so as to have always 1/4th of an inch of the stuff on your needle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WORKING OF G ON CREWEL-St.i.tCH SAMPLER.]

[Sidenote: TO WORK D.]

THICK OUTLINE-St.i.tCH (D on sampler) is like thick crewel-st.i.tch with the exception that, as in ordinary outline-st.i.tch (B), you keep your thread always above the needle to the left.

[Sidenote: TO WORK E.]

In BACK-St.i.tCH (E), instead of first bringing the needle out at the point where the embroidery is to begin, you bring it out 1/8th of an inch in advance of it. Then, putting your needle back, you take up this 1/8th together with another 1/8th in advance. For the next st.i.tch you put your needle into the hole made by the last st.i.tch, and so on, taking care not to split the last thread in so doing.

[Sidenote: TO WORK F.]

To work the SPOTS (F) on sampler--having made a back-st.i.tch, bring your needle out through the same hole as before, and make another back-st.i.tch above it, so that you have, in what appears to be one st.i.tch, two thicknesses of thread; then bring your needle out some distance in advance of the last st.i.tch, and proceed as before. The distance between the st.i.tches is determined by the effect you desire to produce. The thread should not be drawn too tight.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 13. CREWEL WORK AND CREWEL-St.i.tCH.]

[Sidenote: TO WORK G.]

You begin STEM-St.i.tCH (G) with the usual half-st.i.tch. Then, holding the thread downwards, instead of proceeding as in crewel-st.i.tch (A) you slant your needle so as to bring it out a thread or two higher up than the half-st.i.tch, but precisely above it. You next put the needle in 1/8th of an inch in advance of the last st.i.tch, and, as before, bring it out again in a slanting direction a thread or two higher. At the back of the work (Ill.u.s.tration 12) the st.i.tches lie in a slanting direction.

[Sidenote: TO WORK H.]

To work wider STEM-St.i.tCH (H). After the first two st.i.tches, bring your needle out precisely above and in a line with them, and put it in again 1/8th of an inch in advance of the last st.i.tch, producing a longer stroke, which gives the measure of those following. The slanting st.i.tches at the back (Ill.u.s.tration 12) are only two-thirds of the length of those on the face.

CREWEL AND OUTLINE St.i.tCHES 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-St.i.tCH is worked SOLID in the heart-shape in the centre of the sampler. On the left side the rows of st.i.tching 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 14. CREWEL WORK IN VARIOUS St.i.tCHES.]

[Sidenote: TO WORK SOLID CREWEL-St.i.tCH.]

The way to work solid crewel-st.i.tch 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 st.i.tches until the s.p.a.ce 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 st.i.tching, there results a streakiness of texture, apparent in the stem on Ill.u.s.tration 13. What you get is, in effect, a combination of crewel and outline st.i.tches, as at J, which in the other case only occurs in the centre of the shape where the files of st.i.tches meet.

To represent shading in crewel-st.i.tch, to which it is admirably suited (A, Ill.u.s.tration 41), 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 s.p.a.ce 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 st.i.tches should quite cover the ground without pressing too closely one against the other.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 15. CREWEL-St.i.tCH IN TWISTED SILK.]

It does not seem that Englishwomen of the 17th century were ever very faithful to the st.i.tch we know by the name of crewel. Old examples of work done entirely in crewel-st.i.tch, as distinguished from what is called crewel work, are seldom if ever to be met with. The st.i.tch occurs in most of the old English embroidery in wool; but it is astonis.h.i.+ng, 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-st.i.tch. The detail on Ill.u.s.tration 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 st.i.tch is used. And that appears to have been the prevailing practice--to use crewel-st.i.tch for stems and outlines, and for little else but the very simplest forms. The filling in of the leaf.a.ge, the diapering within the leaf shapes, and the smaller and more elaborate details generally were done in long-and-short-st.i.tch, or whatever came handiest. In fact, the thing to be represented, fruit, berry, flower, or what not, seems to have suggested the st.i.tch, which it must be confessed was sometimes only a sort of scramble to get an effect.

Of course the artist always chooses her st.i.tch, 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 fas.h.i.+on.

Quite in the traditional manner is Ill.u.s.tration 14. One would fancy at first sight that the work was almost entirely in crewel-st.i.tch. 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 st.i.tches are it is not easy to say. The mystery of many a st.i.tch 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-st.i.tch which I could find for ill.u.s.tration (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-st.i.tch is given in the divided skirt, let us call it, of the personage in Ill.u.s.tration 72.

Beautiful back-st.i.tching occurs in the Italian work on Ill.u.s.tration 89, and the st.i.tch is used for sewing down the _applique_ in Ill.u.s.tration 94.

CHAIN-St.i.tCH.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 16. CHAIN-St.i.tCH AND KNOTS.]

CHAIN and TAMBOUR St.i.tCH are in effect practically the same, and present the same rather granular surface. The difference between them is that chain-st.i.tch is done in the hand with an ordinary needle, and tambour-st.i.tch 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-st.i.tch, 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-st.i.tch in a frame.

Chain-st.i.tch is not to be confounded with split-st.i.tch (see page 105), which somewhat resembles it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 17. CHAIN-St.i.tCH SAMPLER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 18. CHAIN-St.i.tCH SAMPLER (BACK).]

[Sidenote: TO WORK A.]

To work chain-st.i.tch (A on the sampler, Ill.u.s.tration 17) bring the needle out, hold the thread down with the left thumb, put the needle in again at the hole through which you brought it out, take up 1/4 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-st.i.tch. In fact, in the quilted coverlet, Ill.u.s.tration 69 (as in much similar work of the period), the outline pattern, which you might take for back-st.i.tching, proves to have been worked from the back in chain-st.i.tch. The same thing occurs in the case of the Persian quilt in Ill.u.s.tration 70.

[Sidenote: TO WORK B.]

A playful variation upon chain-st.i.tch (B on the sampler, Ill.u.s.tration 17) 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 st.i.tch," 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 Ill.u.s.tration 64.

[Sidenote: TO WORK C.]

A variety of chain-st.i.tch (C on the sampler, Ill.u.s.tration 17) 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 1/8th of an inch below where it first went in but precisely on the same line, and you have the first link of your chain.

[Sidenote: TO WORK D.]

To work what is known as cable-chain (D on the sampler, Ill.u.s.tration 17) keep your thread to the right, put in your needle, pointing downwards, a little below the starting point, and bring it out about 1/4th of an inch below where you put it in; then put it through the little st.i.tch just formed, from right to left, hold your thread towards the left under your thumb, put your needle through the st.i.tch now in process of making from right to left, draw up the thread, and the first two links of your chain are made.

[Sidenote: TO WORK E.]