Herring-bone is somewhat similar in appearance to feather-stitch, but the method of working is quite different. It is begun from the opposite end of the border, working from the bottom upwards, and the needle is set in the same direction as the line of the border, not at right angles or diagonally, but on the line itself. The stitches are taken alternately from side to side, and the threads cross each other naturally, without any intervention of the needle or thumb of the worker. It is a stitch well known to the neat-fingered housewife for keeping flat the cut edges of a seam where a hem is considered too clumsy. As a decoration it is seldom used in its simplest form; but I have seen many beautiful pieces of embroidery executed entirely in other forms of the same stitch, such as Swiss or Close herring-bone or Fish-bone. The method of work is shown here, and I think needs no further description. In the third diagram of this stitch it will be noticed that the needle goes at right angles with the outline, both in the large stitch from edge to edge, and in the little stitch in the middle. This makes the work less thick and substantial than the Swiss, which gives the same effect at a greater expenditure of silk or cotton, &c.
Back-stitching is very useful for making fine lines, for following outside of an outline which may seem too hard, or for breaking up a background, as in the central petal of the fleur-de-lys in the sampler, where it answers the same purpose as dots or ‘sympathetic lines’ in a drawing, by filling a flat surface quietly and unobtrusively. It is well to work it in rather coarser thread than the satin-stitch it accompanies. The stitches should not lie too close together; a very small piece of the stuff should be taken up on the needle at each stitch, and the point of the needle brought out at the spot where the next stitch is to be. If the dots do not look large enough, each stitch should be gone over twice, instead of only once, at exactly the same place. When three or four stitches are used one over the other, they make a smooth raised knot preferable to French knots for linen-work, as they do not get disarranged by ironing. When only one or two stitches are used for each dot, the needle should pierce the thread at the back as it goes through from one dot to the next place.
Cross-stitch is, I think, too well known to need much in the way of description. But the application of it to linen-work would well repay more attention than is commonly given to it. I need only point to the accompanying examples from South Kensington to show something of the beauty that may be arrived at by this simple kind of work. There are three typical ways of doing this, the first (as in Illustration F) by making a pattern on the linen by means of cross-stitch alone, in one colour. The second (F, f), by making the pattern by the linen, the background being in cross-stitch. The third, by combining cross-stitch with back-stitch for the fine lines, by means of which the smaller detail can be described without breaking up the pattern too much. (See F, f).
It can be diversified by using two or more colours, but a medley is undesirable. I myself prefer the patterns worked in one colour only; and I believe most of the old work was done in either red, green, blue, or brownish yellow, each used alone, and making by itself quite sufficient contrast with the white linen on which it was worked.
Illustration (F), Cross-stitch
Spanish, Sixteenth Century. V. & A. Museum (No. 227—1880)