Church Needlework: A manual of practical instruction

by Hinda M. Hands

In choosing the materials, whether it be the linen itself or the embroidery threads, a careful judgment is required to select only the best and most durable. If colours are to be used in the ornament, it is well to test them beforehand as to their behaviour under the ordeal of washing. The guarantee of the labels on many of them is insufficient. The linen itself ought also to be washed in boiling water before the cutting-out or embroidering is attempted. Hand-made and grass-bleached linens are much to be preferred to the more perfect-looking but less reliable products of machinery.

Linen thread for embroidery is not so easy to work with as some of the cottons prepared for this purpose; but it looks so well when carefully handled that it repays a little extra trouble in the using. It is apt to come untwisted in the friction through the stuff, and then to break rather readily; the remedy is to roll the needle between the finger and thumb from time to time during each needleful, to keep it twisted right, or to change hands, working with the left if possible, or from the opposite end of the work where it is convenient. The needlefuls also should not be too long.

‘D.M.C.’ cottons (of which there are a great number of different kinds) are very nice-looking and pleasant to work with; the colours also are good.

For white work I prefer Clark’s Anchor (à broder), the numbers from 5 to 10 being especially good and useful.

The Stitches

There is a great variety in the stitches which may be employed in linen embroidery, but for each separate piece of work it is best to keep to one or two only. In the accompanying sampler I have contrived to show about a dozen different ones without seriously interfering with the unity of the design; but it is to be taken merely as a sampler of stitches, and of those only the most desirable for Church linen.

All this kind of work should be solid and firm without being drawn too tight. It should never be so tightly done as embroidery which is worked in a frame, if the linen becomes puckered or drawn out of shape it will never ‘come right’ afterwards, so the stitches ought to be well practised on a waste piece of linen till the right degree of tension is ascertained. A want of due regard to this is the cause of much disappointment in work done in the hand; if too loose it soon becomes shabby, and if too tight it makes a series of small holes all round the work, after repeated efforts of the laundress to make the thing lie smoothly by means of much stretching and heavy ironing.

In general method, embroidery worked loose in the hand differs from that done in a frame, in that each stitch is completed by one action of the needle instead of two, as it goes in and out of the stuff.

Satin-stitch, marked A on the sampler, is nearly always padded first by running a few stitches backwards and forwards in the opposite direction to that of the satin-stitch, which covers it by going ‘over and over,’ the needle going in at one edge of the outline and coming out at the other as nearly as possible at right angles. The stitches should be placed quite close together, and should never be much more than ¼ inch across: if the design shows a wider space to be filled it must be subdivided by a voided line. Some workers pad their satin-stitch very thickly, thinking to make it handsomer; but all very high relief is a mistake from an artistic point of view, as it destroys the delicacy one expects to see in linen-work, and obtrudes itself unduly even when worked entirely in white. Indeed, some authorities go so far as to say that the change of surface or texture caused by the stitchery is the only legitimate effect in white work; but I think the majority would allow a little relief, providing it is not exaggerated, especially as it causes the satin-stitch to lie much more smoothly than when done without any under layer of cotton.