Fig. 101. A good hand design in cross-stitching
Now suppose that you had a little linen or silk bag on which you would like to have a cross-stitch design, yet this material is not coarse enough for you to use as a guide for the cross-stitching. Do not think you cannot do it, for I will show you a way. Get a piece of scrim just as coarse as you can find, and baste it over the place you would like to cross-stitch. Work the design on it and when the cross-stitching is all finished pull out the scrim thread by thread. Sometimes you will have to snip the thread of the scrim if your needle accidentally gets caught in them. (Figures [101], [102], and [103].)
Fig. 102. A cross-stitch design
Fig. 103. Another cross-stitch design
A very simple thing to do is to braid a dress for yourself. Now that all the large pattern houses are carrying transfer patterns you can get a design for braiding very cheap. A little girl I know braided a dress for herself and one for her mother last summer. She used light blue chambray and braided it with white. There are several kinds of braid, but the easiest to use is soutache, whether it is cotton or silk. It is a flat braid and varies in width from one to three eighths of an inch. First stamp your design on the material, or if you have not a transfer pattern you can draw a design on tissue paper, making it as long as required and then baste the paper in right position on your dress. Take a stiletto, which is a little tool somewhat like a nail that is used in embroidery for piercing holes, and punch a hole on the line. Push one end of your braid through this and fasten the end of it on the wrong side of your material. Thread your needle with sewing cotton or silk the colour of the braid and sew it down with little running stitches and an occasional back-stitch to fasten it firmly. When you come to the end of the line or of the braid, carry the end through as at the beginning and fasten.