Part 17

In sprig C the underlay is of parchment, lightly stitched in place. The use of a double underlay in parts gives additional relief. The embroidery upon this (in slightly twisted silk) is in satin-stitch.

The leaf shapes at D are padded with cotton wool, cut out as nearly as possible to the shape required, and tacked down with fine cotton. They are then worked over with floss in satin-stitch. The stalks are not padded with cotton wool, but first worked with crewel wool, which, being soft and elastic, forms an excellent ground for working over in floss silk.

In working a stalk like that at E, you first lay down a double layer of soft, thick cotton, and then work over it with flatter cotton (made expressly for padding) in slanting satin-stitch. Three threads of smooth round silk are then attached to one side of the padding and carried diagonally across to the other side, where they are sewn down with strong thread of the same colour close to the underlay, so that the stitches may not show. They are then brought back to the side from which they started, sewn down, and returned again, and so backwards and forwards to the end. The crossing threads make a sort of pattern, and it is a point of good workmanship that they should cross regularly. Such pattern is more obvious when threads of three different shades of colour are employed. Threads of twisted silk may, of course, be equally well used this way without padding underneath.

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 of string, sewn down with stitches always in the direction of the twist. It is worked over with floss in satin-stitch.

In sprig H the underwork consists of stitching in soft cotton, over which thick silk is embroidered in bullion-stitch. The rule is to work the first stitching in such a direction that the surface work crosses it at right angles. The small leaf is worked over with fine purse silk in satin-stitch, which is used also for the stalk.

In the smaller sampler of laid-work, Illustration 50, the broad stem is twice underlaid with crewel, excellent for this soft sort of padding, on account of its elasticity. The leaves have there only one layer of understitching.

Raised work in white upon white is often used for purposes which make it inevitable that sooner or later the work will be washed. That is a consideration which the embroidress must not leave out of account. In any case, work over stitchery is more durable than over loose padding such as cotton wool.

The 15th century work reproduced in Illustration 67 is in flax thread on linen, and the underlay (laid bare in the topmost flower) is of stiff linen, sewn down, not at the margins as in the case of the parchment on the sampler (Illustration 66), but by a row of stitching up the centre of each petal. The veins of the leaves in Illustration 88 are padded with embroidery cotton and worked over with filo-floss. The leaves themselves are not padded, though the sewing down of the veins upon them, as well as the fact that they are applied on to the velvet ground, gives some appearance of relief.

RAISED GOLD.

Our sampler of raised work is done in silk. Underlaying is more often used to raise work in gold, to which in most respects it is best suited. The methods shown in the sampler would answer almost equally well for gold, except that working in gold one would not at H (66) use bullion-stitch, but bullion, first covering the underlay of stitching with smoothly-laid yellow floss.

BULLION consists of closely coiled wire. It is made by winding fine wire tightly and closely round a core of stouter wire. When this central core of wire is withdrawn, you have a long hollow tube of spirally twisted wire. This the embroidress cuts into short lengths as required, and sews on to the silk--as she would a long bead or bugle. Its use is illustrated at A in Illustration 51, where the stems of triple gold cord are tied down at intervals by clasps of bullion, and the leaves, again, are filled in with the same.

It was the mediæval fashion to encrust the robes of kings and pontiffs with pearls and precious stones mounted in gold: the early Byzantine form of crown was practically a velvet cap, on to which were sewn plaques of gorgeous enamel and mounted stones. When to such work embroidery was added, it was not unnatural that it should vie with the gold setting. As a matter of fact, its design was often only a translation into needlework of the forms proper to the goldsmith.

Yet more openly in rivalry with goldsmiths' work was some of the embroidery of the Renaissance, in which the idea--a most mistaken one, of course--seems to have been to imitate beaten metal. This led inevitably to excessively high relief in gold embroidery. You may see in 17th century church work the height to which relief can be carried, and the depth to which ecclesiastical taste can sink.

The Spaniards were, perhaps, the greatest sinners in this respect, seeking, as they did, richness at all cost; but it must be confessed that, in the 16th century at least, they produced most gorgeous results: there is in the treasury of the cathedral at Toledo an altar frontal in gold, silver, and coral, and a yet more beautiful mantle of the Virgin in silver and pearls upon a gold ground, which make one loth to dogmatise.

The preciousness of gold and silver, points, in the nature of things, to their use for church vestments and the like; and high relief gives, no doubt, value to the metal; but the consideration of its intrinsic value leads quickly to display. The artistic value of gold is not so much that it looks gorgeous as that it glorifies the colour caught, so to speak, in its meshes.

Admitting that there is reason for relief in gold embroidery--it catches the light as flat gold does not--one feels that the very slightest modelling is usually enough. Reference was made (page 136) to the effect of gilt gesso obtained in raised gold thread: that really is about the degree of relief it is safe to adopt in gold embroidery, the relief that is readily got by laying on gesso with a brush, not carving or modelling it; and the characteristically blunt forms got by that means repeat themselves when you work with the needle.

There is ample relief in the gold embroidery on Illustrations 68 and 86. The first of these shows both flat and raised work: the latter illustrates not only various degrees of relief, but several ways of underlaying. It scarcely needs pointing out that the flatter serrated leaves are worked over parchment or paper, and the puffy parts of the flowers over softer padding. Allusion has already been made (page 159) to the way the stalk is worked over twisted cords, as on the sampler, Illustration 66. The patterns in which the gold is worked do not tell quite so plainly here as on Illustration 68, where the basket pattern is more pronounced. In the stalk there flat gold wire is used, and again in the broken surface towards the top of the plate.

SPANGLES of gold may be used with admirable effect, at the risk, perhaps, of a rather tinselly look; but that has been often most skilfully avoided both in mediæval work and in Oriental. In India great and very cunning use is made of spangles, by the Parsees in particular, who, by the way, embroider with gold wire.

Gold foil may be cut to any shape and sewn on to embroidery, but spangles take mainly one of two shapes, best distinguished as disc-like and ring-like. The discs are flat, pierced in the centre, and sewn down usually with two or three radiating stitches (A, Illustration 51, and Illustration 67). The rings may be attached by a single thread. They can easily be made to overlap like fish scales, and most elaborately embossed pictures have been worked in this way. There is a vestment in the cathedral at Granada which is a marvel to see; but not the thing to do, surely.

Relief is easily overdone, in figure work so easily that one may say safety is to be found only in the most delicate relief. To make figures look round is to make them look stuffed. That stuffy images are to be found in mediæval church work is only too true. In Gothic art one finds this quaint, perhaps, but it is perilously near the laughable. The point of the ridiculous is plainly overpassed in English work of the 17th century, which degenerates at last into mere doll work--the dolls duly stuffed and dressed in most childish fashion, their drapery, in actual folds, projecting. Some really admirable needlework was wasted upon this kind of thing, which has absolutely no value, except as an object-lesson in the frivolity of the Stuarts and their on-hangers.

QUILTING.

A most legitimate use of padding is in the form of 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 it was called.

If you merely stitch two thicknesses of stuff together in a pattern, such as that on Illustration 69, the stuff between the stitches has a tendency to rise: the two layers of stuff do not lie close except where they are held together by the stitching, and a very pleasantly uneven surface results. This effect is enhanced if between the two stuffs 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 is of soft cord.

A cunning way of padding is first to stitch the outline of the design, and then from the back to insert the stuffing. You first pierce the stuff with a stiletto, and, having pushed in the cord, cotton, or what not, efface as far as possible the piercing: the stuffing has then not much temptation to escape from its confinement.

The Persians do most elaborate quilting on fine white linen, which they sew with yellow silk; but the pattern is stuffed with cords of blue cotton, the colour of which just grins through the white sufficiently to cool it, and to distinguish it from the creamy white ground made warmer by the yellow stitching.

Quilting is most often done in white upon colour, or in one colour upon white. Yellow silk on white linen (as in the case of Illustration 69) was a favourite combination, and is always a delicate one. But there is no reason why a variety of colours should not be used in a counterpane. When you stitch down the ground with coloured silk you give it, of course, colour as well as flatness.