THE PROCESS OF EMBROIDERY. The tools of the embroiderer are the simplest, consisting of needles to draw the different kinds and sizes of thread through the work, a frame in which to hold the material (which may be omitted in small pieces of work). and the scissors to cut the thread. The different threads and other ma teria,ls used in the application of the design have been mentioned. A stitch is defined as the thread left on the surface of the cloth after each ply of the needle. Eight or nine different, stitches are used in the production of embroidery. The simplest is the canvas stitch, in which the needle goes back and forth in the spaces formed at the intersection of the warp and woof in the natural weave of the cloth. Cross stitch is a form of canvas stitch. Crewel stitch is a diagonal stitch used in outlining. Some of the other principal stitches are chain. or tambour, herring-bone (so called because of its resemblance to a fish's back bone), buttonhole, feather, rope, of which the French knot is a complicated form; satin, long and short, darning, and running stitch. Em broidery may or may not be reversible: for the former the running, darning. and satin stitches are used. About the twelfth century the model ing and padding of figures became popular; that is, embroidery was performed by sewing onto the material as well as into it. llence We have the
couching stitch, used when one thread is sewed on with another, and appliqui or relief work, where one piece of cloth is sewed onto another. To give effectiveness to the applique work the figures are often padded. Not only thread and cloth, but such other decorative materials as braid, chenille, tinsel, and spangles also began to be used in embroidery about the twelfth century. Patchwork, in which different pieces of cloth are sewed together, is sometimes reckoned as a kind of embroidery. In the Egyptian Aluseum at Ghizeh, it is said, fs a large piece of patchwork of elaborate design made of thousands of bits of gazelle-hide and for merly used as a canopy to cover the body of an Egyptian queen who died B.c. 9S0. It is exactly the same work technically as the modern cot tager's patchwork quilt.
During the closing half of the nineteenth cen tury machine embroidery was developed to a pitch of great mechanical perfection, and various machines have been devised for this purpose. Consult: Cole. The Art of Tapestry-Haking and Embroidery (London, ISM) ; Lefebvre, Embroid ery and Lam', translated and enlarged by Cole (London, ISSS) ; Day and Buckle, Art in Yeedle work (New York, 1900).