XVIII
APPLIQUÉ ON LINEN AND OTHER MATERIALS AND HEDEBO EMBROIDERY
Appliqué, or laying one material on another and stitching or embroidering them together is one of the simplest forms of embroidery that even the Indians years ago knew how to do. How many of you have not seen on an Indian woman queer shapes cut out of leather and ornamented with beads used for a border on her skirt?
There are two kinds of appliqué, underlaid and overlaid. Most of the work is the latter kind. The underlaid is a little more difficult to do. It will be explained at greater length later in this chapter.
Appliqué is such easy work that you will almost think it a mistake not to have heard about it before, but after all it is really necessary that we should know the simpler embroidery stitches before we attempt an appliqué piece, so that we can decorate it in the manner to suit ourselves.
The European peasants work some of the crudest specimens of appliqué, yet their colour schemes and choice of material are good. For instance, Russian crash, which is sold at the towel department of many of our large department stores, from twelve to twenty cents a yard, and which is very narrow, usually about sixteen inches wide, is often employed as the background of their portières.
Before the Russo-Japanese War it was possible to get Russian crash as wide as forty inches. It is made by the peasants in their homes from the waste ends left from weaving linens. You have no doubt read of how poor Russian peasants live in hovels in the same room with the cow, if they are fortunate enough to possess one, and their pigs. Necessarily the work they do is not very clean but the artistic qualities of the crash overcomes the fact of the dirt.
The better class of peasants will take three strips of crash and connect them together with coarse sewing or lace stitches and then apply circles of broadcloth, or coloured linens on them. Other geometrical figures are often applied.
I heard of a Southern family the other day who are so thrifty that they allow nothing to go to waste, not even the old coats and trousers that have played the double rôle of clothing the father and then have been cut down for Johnny. After Johnny has had all the wear possible out of them Grandma again cuts them, this time in the shape of leaves, and sews them on a large muslin circle, one overlapping the other. This forms a mat for the dining room. I am telling you this story not that you may imitate it, but rather to let you know that after all we have women here that are as clever and thrifty with their needles as the European women.
