Part 14

LAID-WORK.

The necessity for something like what is called "LAID-WORK" is best shown by reference to satin-stitch. It was said in reference to it that satin-stitches should not be too long. There is a great deal of Eastern work in which surface satin-stitch, or its equivalent, floats so loosely upon the face of the stuff that it can only be described as flimsy. Nothing could be more beautiful in its way than certain Soudanese embroidery, in which coloured floss in stitches an inch or more long lies glistening on the stuff without any interruption of threads to fasten it down.

Embroidery of this kind, however, hardly comes within the scope of practical work. Long, loose stitches want sewing down. Some compromise has to be made between art and beauty. The problem is to make the work strong enough without seriously disturbing its lustrous surface, and the solution of it is "laid-work," at which we arrive thus almost by necessity.

It involves no new stitch, but is only another way of using stitches 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 close to the ground, but in their place upon it, by lines of stitching in the cross direction.

Laid-work is not, at the best, a very strong or lasting kind of embroidery (it needs to be carefully covered up even as it is worked), but by no other means is the silky beauty of coloured floss so perfectly set forth. It is hardly worth doing in anything but floss.

Laid-work lends itself also to gradation of colour within certain limits--the limits, that is to say, of the straight parallel lines in which the silk is laid: the direction of these is determined often by the lines of sewing which are to cross them. In any case the direction of the threads is here more than ever important. The sewing down must take lines and may form patterns.

The sampler, Illustration 46, wants little or no explanation. It illustrates the various ways of laying. In the leaf the floss is sewn down with split-stitch, which forms the veining. Elsewhere it is kept in place by "couching," a process presently to be described. For the outlines, split-stitch and couching are employed. The last row of laid work in the grounding is purposely pulled out of the straight by the couching in order to give a waved edge. The diaper which represents the seeding of the flower is not, properly speaking, laid-work: single threads of white purse silk are there couched down with dark.

For the transverse stitching, for which also it is best to use floss, either split-stitch may be used, as in the leaf in the sampler, Illustration 46, or a thread may be laid across and sewn down--couched, as it is called--as in the flower. The closer the cross lines the stronger the work, but the less lustrous the effect.

Laid floss may be employed to glorify the entire surface of a linen material, as in the sampler or for the pattern only upon a ground worth showing, as in Illustrations 47, 48, 49.

Laid-work will not give anything like modelling, and it is not best suited to figure design except where it is quite flatly treated. An instance of its use in figure work occurs on Illustration 79. It is effective when quite naively and simply used in cross lines which do not appear to take any account of the forms crossed--as, for example, in Illustration 47, where the stitching does not pretend to express more than a flat surface. The floss, however, is there carefully laid at a different angle of inclination in each petal, so as to give variety of colour. The lines of sewing vary according to the lines of the laid floss, but do not cross them at right angles. The important thing is, of course, that they should catch the laid "tresses" at intervals not too far apart. If the lines which sew down the floss have also to express drawing, as in the case of the bird's wings in Illustration 48, the underlying floss must be laid in lines which they will cross. In the case of the leaves in the same piece of work, the floss is laid in the direction in which the leaf grows, and the stitching across, which sews it down, is slightly curved so as to suggest roundness in them.

A more finished piece of work is shown in Illustration 49, where the laid floss crosses the forms, and the sewing down takes very much the place of veining in the flower, and of ribs in the scroll, expressing about as much modelling as can be expressed this way, and more, perhaps, than it is advisable often to attempt.

The sewing down asserts itself most, of course, when it is in a colour contrasting with the laid floss, as it does in the leaves in the smaller sampler overleaf.

The stitching down makes usually a pattern more or less conspicuous. On this same sampler it does so very deliberately in the case of the broad stalk. The rather sudden variation of the colour shown there in the leaves is harmless enough in bold work, to which the process is best suited. One may be too careful in gradating the tints: timidity in this respect prevails too much among modern needlewomen: an artist in floss should not want her work to look like a gradated wash of colour. The Italians of the 16th and 17th centuries (see Illustration 49) were not afraid of rather abrupt transition in the shades of colour they used for laid-work.

When laid floss is kept in place by threads themselves sewn down across it, such threads are called "couched," and the work itself may be described as laid and couched. Hence arises some confusion between the two methods of work--laying and 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, &c. (silk or gold), thread by thread or in pairs. Laid floss is sewn down en masse, couched silk in single or double threads; and accordingly laid answers best for surface covering, couched for outlining, except in the case of gold, which even for surface covering is always couched.

COUCHING

COUCHING is the sewing down of one thread by another--as in the outline of the flower on the laid sampler, Illustration 46. The stitches with which it is sewn down, thread by thread, or, in the case of gold, two threads at a time, are best worked from right to left; or, in outlining, from outside the forms inwards, and a waxed thread is often used for the purpose. Naturally the cord to be sewn down should be held fairly tightly in place to keep the line even.

It is usual in couching to sew down the silk or cord with stitches crossing it at right angles, except in the case of a twisted cord, which should be sewn down with stitches in the direction of the twist.

Couching is best done in a frame; but it may be done in the hand by means of buttonhole-stitch.

When a surface is covered with couching, as in the seeding of the flower in the sampler, Illustration 46, the sewing down stitches make a pattern--all the plainer there, because the stitching is in a contrasting shade of colour. It is quite permissible to call attention to the stitching if it suits your artistic purpose. To disguise it by sewing through the cord is not a workmanlike practice. A worker should frankly accept a method of work and get character out of it.

Embroidresses have a clever way of untwisting a cord before each stitch and twisting it again after stitching through it--between the strands, that is to say, in which the stitching is lost. The device is rather too clever. It shows a cord with no visible means of attachment to the ground, which is not desirable, however much desired. There is no advantage in attaching cords to the surface of silk so that they look as if they had been glued on to it. Conjuring tricks are highly amusing, but one does not think very highly of conjurers. Personally, I would much rather have seen more plainly the way the cord is sewn down in the graceful cross in Illustration 51, a design 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 ones between the broad and narrow bands. The broad band is worked in rows of double filoselle, of various shades, sewn down with single filoselle. In the narrower bands twisted silk is sewn down with stitches in the direction of its twist. This is more plainly seen in the upper of the two bands, where the sloping stitches are lighter in colour than the cord sewn down.

Characteristic use is made of rather puffy couching in the ornament of the lady's dress in Miss Keighley's panel, Illustration 61, where it has very much the richness of embroidery in seed pearls.

It was a common practice in Germany in the 16th century to work in solid couching upon cloth, employing a twisted thread and sewing it with stitches in the direction of the twist, so that at first sight one does not recognise it as couching. It looks like rather coarse stitching in the direction of the forms, and expresses shading very well. The cloth ground accounts, perhaps, for the choice of method: the material is not otherwise a pleasant one to embroider upon.

A rather earlier German method was to couch in parallel lines of white upon white linen, and so get relief and texture but no modelling, though the drawing was helped by varying the direction of the parallel lines.

The entire surface of a linen ground was sometimes covered with couched threads of silk or fine wool--some of it in vertical and horizontal lines, some of it in the direction of the pattern. This, again, was a German practice, as may be seen in the Hildesheim Cope at South Kensington.

All-over couching may be used with advantage to renew the ground of embroidery so worn as to be unsightly; and is more lasting than laid-work for the purpose. It is laborious to do, but more satisfactory when done than remounting; and one or the other is a necessity sometimes. The effect of age is, up to a certain point, pleasing: rags are not.

Couching, however (except with gold), was more commonly used for outlining, and is quite peculiarly suited to give a firm line. A beautiful example of outline work in coloured silk upon white linen is pictured in Illustration 90, in which the lines of delicate Renaissance arabesque are perfectly preserved. The rare practice of such work as this, notwithstanding its distinction, is perhaps sufficiently accounted for by its modesty. It is true, it wants well-considered and definitely drawn design, and there is no possible fudging with it.

The value of a couched cord as an outline to stitching (satin-stitch in this instance) is shown in Illustration 91, in which the singularly well-schemed and well-drawn lines of the ornament are given with faultless precision. This is a portion of an altogether admirable frame to an altogether foolish picture in needlework, of which a fragment only is shown.