An embroidery book

by Anne Knox Arthur

TO
MY MOTHER

NOTE

The Author’s thanks are due to the owners of the pieces of embroidery illustrated in this book who kindly lent them to her for reproduction:—Miss Beatrice Brooks, Miss Marion Boyd, Miss Janetta S. Gillespie, Miss Mary A. Gill, Miss Martha Stevenson, Miss Elspeth Stewart, Miss Jessie Gibson (students of the Glasgow School of Art); also to Miss Kay, Parkhurst, Cedars, Derby, for the loan of three pieces worked by her pupils.

FOREWORD

Now that many of our busy working people have better regulations as regards the hours of the day’s work, there is great need to provide occupation for the day’s leisure; and needlework, as a leisure craft, is one of the most refreshing and pleasant and profitable sources of entertainment—provided always, that those who undertake it realise that, with right thought and consideration on the part of every worker, each should become, as it were, a law unto herself, so that she should realise also that she need, under no circumstance, be the slave of old traditions, if she can give fitting reasons for making a change which is to the purpose of her work.

To be in a healthy and living state, our art should be constantly changing its fashion; if it stands still, it is retrograde, and for some few generations we may say this of British embroidery. What changes it has undergone are due almost entirely to the commercial enterprise of manufacturers of printed patterns—usually foreign ones. The importation became very considerable with the introduction of so-called Berlin woolwork, and since that period the British needlewoman has set aside her own ingenious arrangements and follows blindly where the merchant leads, and British design for needlework, as an expression of its people, is almost a dead thing.

Most people have a superstition that in knowledge of a multitude of stitches lies the whole mystery of needlework. This is emphatically not the case. There really is no mystery about stitches; they are but the letters of the needleworker’s alphabet, and the words of her language—to be used according to her own ideas. One may embroider poems; another may embroider prayers and praises for her church; another may beautify a fair woman’s garment or sing a little song in stitches for a baby’s robe; yet another may be like a treatise on surgery, repairing and restoring that which has been damaged. But needlework does not exist for the stitches. It is the stitches which—as they are well or ill-used—express the worker, and, if she is a wise worker, she can find out for herself most of the stitches she needs. Nor is it necessary to be at great expense in needlework, indeed, for those who take it up as a recreative craft half the interest may lie in the fact that no material is too common or too homely to be made into something fitting and, therefore, beautiful—since the truest art is to make a thing pleasing to the eye and yet entirely suited to the purpose.

The commonest failing of the designers of this country is that they think that beauty lies in the elaboration of ornament, and this is why the fashions of British dressmakers fall short of those abroad. It is the little simple contrivances, that are almost no more than a sort of loving finish to the actual construction of a piece of work, that give the highest standard of style in garments: and the best training a needlewoman can have is to make her seams, hems, openings and fastenings of garments or household fitments things of beauty, while, at the same time, she considers the uses and purpose of her work. It is as a piece of engineering we should consider the construction of our household hangings and covers of our garments—planning that decoration should be coarse or fine, as fits the material, and taking thought also for the washing and wearing of it.

The fashions of to-day show a very marked tendency to decorative construction, due in great measure to a change in the needlework for school children introduced a few years ago. The tendency shows most interesting results, especially in the fact that the shaping of clothing has become very simple and that garments depend almost entirely on stitchery for their decoration, rather than on manufactured braids and trimmings; and the styles and shapes are infinitely less stereotyped, so that clothing for women tends to express more nearly the personality of the wearer than it has done for many generations.

The work of the hand—as apart from that of the machine—is more and more in demand, and decorative needlework, even in our shops, is becoming more to be desired, for unique and personal characteristics and expression, than it has been for a very long period. This being the case, let our needlewoman take courage and realise that in each mind there are possibilities of new ideas and new inventions—that all materials open up new opportunities, and that with little labour she may greatly enhance and beautify the things she works and find appreciative opening for her skill. Never was there such universal demand for handwork of every kind, and for such household fittings, which tend towards economy and labour saving in particular, the need is almost unlimited. Some of the most interesting embroideries done during the last few years have been planned and carried out in some of our Scottish schools by untrained workers—designs so simple that the workers do not realise that they are designing at all—since they draw largely with needle and thread alone, and have little assistance from chalk and other markings. And it is this type of work, usually sewn in coarse yarns and on rough canvas, flannel or homespun, that is perhaps the most happy and most stimulating for a designer of needlework to begin on. The work is so quickly achieved—so gallant and bright in colour—so utilitarian in purpose and of so little cost in outlay, that it is above all others to be recommended. It needs no experience in stitchery to work in bright wools, if the material is firm and strong, and the writer has pleasant experience of maid-servants and village wives in the north country making admirable rugs, garments, and other embroideries, which command good prices at the Artificers’ Guilds and other places where a high artistic standard of design is required.