Art in Needlework Part 3

A zigzag chain, of a rather fancy description, goes by the name of Vand.y.k.e chain (E on the sampler, Ill.u.s.tration 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-st.i.tch from left to right; then, putting your needle into that, make another slanting st.i.tch, this time from right to left--and so to and fro to the end.

[Sidenote: TO WORK F.]

The braid-st.i.tch shown at F on the sampler (Ill.u.s.tration 17) is worked as follows, horizontally from right to left. Bring your needle out at a point which is to be the lower edge of your work, throw your thread round to the left, and, keeping it all the time loosely under your thumb, put your needle under the thread and twist it once round to the right. Then, at the upper edge of your work, put in the needle and slide the thread towards the right, bring the needle out exactly below where you put it in, carry your thread under the needle towards the left, draw the thread tight, and your first st.i.tch is done.

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

[Sidenote: TO WORK G.]

A yet more fanciful variety of braid-st.i.tch (G on the sampler, Ill.u.s.tration 17) is worked vertically, downwards. Having, as before, put your needle under the thread and twisted it once round, put it in at a point which is to be the left edge of your work, and, instead of bringing it out immediately below that point, slant it to the right, bringing it out on that edge of the work, and finish your st.i.tch as in the case of F.

These braid-st.i.tches look best worked in stout thread of close texture.

In covering a surface with chain-st.i.tch (needlework or tambour) the usual plan is to follow the contour of the design, working chain within chain until the leaf or whatever it may be is filled in. This st.i.tch is rarely worked in lines across the forms, but it has been effectively used in that way, following always the lines of the warp and weft of the stuff. Even in that case the successive lines of st.i.tching should be all in one direction--not running backwards and forwards--or it will result in a sort of pattern of braided lines. The reason for the more usual practice of following the outline of the design is obvious. The st.i.tch lends itself to sweeping, even to perfectly spiral, lines--such as occur in Greek wave patterns: it was, in fact, made use of in that way by the Greeks some four or five centuries B.C.

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: 19. CHAIN AND SURFACE St.i.tCHES.]

We owe the tambour frame, they say, to China; but 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, and that it is most lasting. The misfortune is that the sewing machine has learnt to do something at once so like it and so mechanically even, as to discredit genuine hand-work, whether tambour work or chain-st.i.tch.

For all that, neither is to be despised. If they have often a mechanical appearance that is not all the fault of the st.i.tch: the worker is to blame. Indian embroiderers depart sometimes so far from mechanical precision as to shock the admirers of monotonously even work. Artistic use of chain st.i.tch is made in many of our ill.u.s.trations: for outlines in Ill.u.s.trations 24 and 72; for surface covering in Mr. Crane's lion, Ill.u.s.tration 74; to represent landscape in Ill.u.s.tration 78, where everything except the faces of the little men is in chain-st.i.tch; and again for figure work in Ill.u.s.tration 81. In Ill.u.s.tration 19 it occurs in a.s.sociation with a curious surface st.i.tch; in Ill.u.s.tration 64 it is used to outline and otherwise supplement inlay. The old Italians did not disdain to use it. In fact, wherever artists have employed it, they show that there is nothing inherently inartistic about the st.i.tch.

HERRING-BONE St.i.tCH.

HERRING-BONE is the name by which it is customary to distinguish a variety of st.i.tches somewhat resembling the spine of a fish such as the herring. It would be simpler to describe them as "fish-bone;" but that term has been appropriated to describe a particular variety of it. One would have thought it more convenient to use fish for the generic term, and a particular fish for the specific. However, it saves confusion to use names as far as possible in their accepted sense.

It will be seen from the sampler, Ill.u.s.tration 20, that this st.i.tch may be worked open or tolerably close; but in the latter case it loses something of its distinctive character. Fine lines may be worked in it, but it appears most suited to the working of broadish bands and other more or less even-sided or, it may be, tapering forms, more feathery in effect than fish-bone-like, such as are shown at E on sampler.

Ordinary herring-bone is such a familiar st.i.tch that the necessity of describing it is rather a matter of literary consistency than of practical importance.

The two simpler forms of herring-bone (it is always worked from left to right, and begun with a half-st.i.tch) marked A and C on the sampler are strikingly different in appearance, and are worked in different ways--as will be seen at once by reference to the back of the sampler (Ill.u.s.tration 21), where the st.i.tches take in the one case a horizontal and in the other a vertical direction.

[Sidenote: TO WORK A.]

To work A, bring your needle out about the centre of the line to be worked; put it into the lower edge of the line about 1/8th of an inch further on; take up this much of the stuff, and, keeping the thread to the right, above the needle, draw it through. Then, with the thread below it, to the right, put your needle into the upper edge of the line 1/4th of an inch further on, and, turning it backwards, take up again 1/8th of an inch of stuff, bringing it out immediately above where it went in on the lower edge.

[Sidenote: TO WORK B.]

What is called "Indian Herring-bone" (B) is merely st.i.tch A worked in longer and more slanting st.i.tches, so that there is room between them for a second row in another colour, the two colours being, of course, properly interlaced.

[Sidenote: TO WORK C.]

To work C, bring your needle out as for A, and, putting it in at the upper edge of the line to be worked and pointing it downwards, whilst your thread lies to the right, take up ever so small a piece of the stuff. Then, slightly in advance of the last st.i.tch, the thread still to the right, your needle now pointing upwards, take another similar st.i.tch from the lower edge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 20. HERRING-BONE SAMPLER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 21. HERRING-BONE SAMPLER (BACK).]

[Sidenote: TO WORK D.]

The variety at D is merely a combination of A and C, as may be seen by reference to the back of the sampler (opposite); though the short horizontal st.i.tches there seen meet, instead of being wide apart as in the case of A.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WORKING OF E ON HERRING-BONE SAMPLER.]

[Sidenote: TO WORK E.]

What is known as "fish-bone" is ill.u.s.trated in the three feathery shapes on the sampler (E), two of which are worked rather open. It is characteristic of this st.i.tch that it has a sort of spine up the centre where the threads cross. Suppose the st.i.tch to be worked horizontally.

Bring your needle out on the under edge of the spine about 1/4th of an inch from the starting point of the work, and put it in on the upper edge of the work at the starting point, bringing it out immediately below that on the lower edge of the work. Put it in again on the upper edge of the spine, rather in advance of where it came out on the lower edge of it before, and bring it out on the lower edge of this spine immediately below where it entered.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WORKING OF F ON HERRING-BONE SAMPLER.]

[Sidenote: TO WORK F.]

In close herring-bone (F on the sampler, Ill.u.s.tration 20) you have always a long st.i.tch from left to right, crossed by a shorter st.i.tch which goes from right to left. Having made a half st.i.tch, bring the needle out at the beginning of the line to be worked, at the lower edge, and put it in 1/8th of an inch from the beginning of the upper edge.

Bring it out again at the beginning of this edge and put it in at the lower edge 1/4th of an inch from the beginning, bringing it out on the same edge 1/8th of an inch from the beginning. Put the needle in again on the upper edge 1/8th of an inch in front of the last st.i.tch on that edge, and bring it out again, without splitting the thread, on the same edge as the hole where the last st.i.tch went in.

If you wish to cover a surface with herring-bone-st.i.tch, you work it, of course, close, so that each successive st.i.tch touches its foregoer at the point where the needle enters the stuff (F on the sampler, Ill.u.s.tration 20). It will be seen that at the back (21) this looks like a double row of back-st.i.tching. Worked straight across a wide leaf, as in the lower half of sampler, it is naturally very loose. A better method of working is shown in the side leaves, which are worked in two halves, beginning at the base of a leaf on one side and working down to it on the other. There is here just the suggestion of a mid-rib between the two rows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WORKING OF G ON HERRING-BONE SAMPLER.]

[Sidenote: TO WORK G.]

The st.i.tch at G on sampler, having the effect of higher relief than ordinary close herring-bone (F), is sometimes misleadingly described as tapestry st.i.tch. It is worked, as the back of the sampler (21) clearly shows, in quite a different way. You get there parallel rows of double st.i.tches. Having made a half-st.i.tch entering the material at the upper edge of the work, bring the needle out on the lower edge of it immediately opposite. Then, going back, put it in at the beginning of the upper edge, and bring it out at the beginning of the lower one.

Thence take a long slanting st.i.tch upwards from left to right, bring the needle out on the lower edge immediately opposite, cross it by a rather shorter st.i.tch from right to left, entering the stuff at the point where the first half-st.i.tch ended, bring this out on the lower edge, opposite, and the st.i.tch is done.

The artistic use of herring-bone-st.i.tch is shown in the leaves of the tulip (84), and a closer variety of it in the pink, or whatever the flower may be, in the hand of the little figure on Ill.u.s.tration 72.

b.u.t.tONHOLE-St.i.tCH.

b.u.t.tONHOLE is more useful in ornament than one might expect a st.i.tch with such a very utilitarian name to be. It is, as its common use would lead one to suppose, pre-eminently a one-edged st.i.tch, a st.i.tch with which to mark emphatically the outside edge of a form. There is, however, a two-edged variety known as ladder-st.i.tch, shown in the two horn shapes on the sampler, Ill.u.s.tration 22.

By the use of two rows back to back, leaf forms may be fairly expressed.

In the leaves on the sampler, the edge of the st.i.tch is used to emphasise the mid rib, leaving a serrated edge to the leaves. The character of the st.i.tch would have been better preserved by working the other way about, and marking the edge of the leaves by a clear-cut line, as in the case of the solid leaves in Ill.u.s.tration 73.

The st.i.tch may be used for covering a ground or other broad surface, as in the pot shape (J) on the sampler, where the diaper pattern produced by its means explains itself the better for being worked in two shades of colour.

The simpler forms of the st.i.tch are the more useful. Worked in the form of a wheel, as in the rosettes at the side of the vase shape (A), the ornamental use of the st.i.tch is obvious.

[Sidenote: TO WORK A.]