CHAPTER III
ON MOUNTING FRAMES AND TRACING DESIGNS
A great deal of Church embroidery is done, for convenience in working, on linen, in small frames, and afterwards cut out and transferred to the richer material, silk, velvet, cloth-of-gold, or whatever it may be. Great care should be exercised in the choice of the linen, which should be unbleached and closely and evenly woven, coarse or fine, according to the nature of the work to be done on it. The inexperienced would do well to buy their linen not from drapers, but from the best embroidery shops, stating for what purpose they require it, whether for heavy gold-work, fine floss, &c.
To stretch the linen on to the frame, cut the linen, ‘by the thread,’ rather wider than the webbing which is attached to two bars of the frame. Turn down the edges evenly. Run a piece of string into the two sides that are going to be laced upon the other two bars. The linen should now be a little narrower than the length of the webbing, to which length it is now stretched by a pin at each end and one in the middle. Over-sew the linen to the webbing firmly with strong linen thread; remove the pins; roll up till the linen is a little shorter than the side bars. Insert the ends of these into the holes provided, and stretch evenly either by pegs, or, in the case of screw-frames, by screwing up the wooden screw-nuts (which ought to have been previously placed as near the central blocks as they would go). Lace up the sides of the linen tightly and evenly, with good string, fastening each end firmly. The linen is now ready to receive the design, or, if the work is to be done upon silk or velvet, that is put on now, over the linen. Loosen the frame a little, either by unscrewing a turn or two, or by moving pegs. Pin each corner of the silk on to the linen, stretching the silk a very little tighter than the linen; sew all round with fine, strong silk, or thread, and tighten up the frame again after it is on.
The design must be well within the size of the mounted linen.
Two straight lines, crossing each other at right angles in the centre, should next be run into the linen with fine silk, right across from end to end, as a guide for tracing. Similar lines should be drawn lightly on the tracing; both sets of lines and angles must be accurate; they are easily done by means of a ‘set-square.’
Transferring. There are many ways of transferring a design to the material it is to be worked upon. The easiest and least satisfactory is by means of ‘ironing off’ transfers. This limits one to the stock patterns, often of very inferior artistic value, which can be bought at the shops. The process gives a smooth even line, rather thick, which must be allowed for in choosing the design, as it must be well covered in the working. It is only suitable for fairly simple and bold designs.
The easiest method by which original designs can be transferred is by the use of carbon paper. The blue is the most satisfactory, the paper of which is thin and blue on both sides, but of course it does not show up well on a dark ground. Before using, when new, it should be laid flat on a table, and rubbed all over with a piece of coarse flannel. There is also a fine green and a yellow, either of which is better for very delicately coloured ground. Black should never be used, and I have not hitherto met with a really satisfactory white carbon paper at all.
The design should be accurately traced on good tracing-cloth, especial care being taken with all geometrical forms, which should always be drawn with mathematical precision; the slightest inaccuracy generally seems to reappear at ‘compound interest.’ It is a good plan when practicable to leave any large circles that may form part of the design untraced till after the greater part of the embroidery is done, and in any case to test them with compasses. Having then a perfect drawing to start with, see that the centre fits to centre and rectangular lines correspond with the same lines on the frame, and pin it carefully in place with fine steel pins. Place a piece of carbon paper between the tracing and the material in the frame, and then go over all the lines of the tracing firmly and clearly with a well sharpened H.B. pencil or an onyx tracer. A porcupine quill or a good knitting-needle will make a very fair substitute for the onyx. The worker must bear in mind that pressure upon any part of the surface which has carbon paper underneath will leave a mark upon the material, and therefore should be careful not to rest the hand upon it or make false lines or pin-marks. A hand-rest can easily be arranged, if one be found necessary, by placing a block of wood or a few books on the table on each side of the frame and laying a board on the top. It is also important that the underneath part of the linen in the frame should be in immediate contact with some hard, smooth surface, such as plate-glass or a hard polished board, before beginning to trace the design.