Yarn-dyed or other good COLOURED LINEN and UNBLEACHED TWILLED LINEN are particularly suitable for use in the colonies and for poor churches at home. Both texture and colouring can be obtained in great perfection, and when worked in pure flax threads, which are also made in many degrees of thickness and almost as much variety of shade and colour as embroidery silks, they will defy the ravages of white ants abroad and the poisonous air of slums at home.
Cloths of gold and of silver are truly splendid, whether as a background for embroidery or to be used alone or for orphreys on a plainer material. Only the very best kinds should ever be employed for Church work, any thing else will look tawdry, and even the best is apt to tarnish in the air of towns or near the sea. Needless to say, it is always expensive.
In all the specimens of ancient church embroideries which have come down to us, we find a free use of gold and silver threads: some are worked entirely in gold, others with a preponderance of the precious metals used in conjunction with silk, while a third use was to touch up salient points or as an outline to glorify the whole and bring it into unity.
The principal kinds of gold and silver thread now in use are:—
Passing, which is made of flat strips of gold or silver twisted tightly over pure silk; a firm, hard thread is the result, resembling wire, which can be obtained in various thicknesses, generally sold on reels. This is sewn down, almost always two threads at a time, with fine, strong sewing-silk.
Tambour, much the same as Passing, only finer, for sewing through the material.
Bullion, of various sizes and patterns, is made of fine wire, evenly twisted in a spiral form without any silk core; usually sold by weight. It is sewn on by first cutting into the lengths required and then ‘threading,’ like the beads called ‘bugles,’ with a fine needle and silk well waxed.
Purl is somewhat similar, but coarser, and without a hollow centre. It is sewn down by passing the sewing-silk over the Purl and drawing it down between the twists of the wire. It is used more for outlines of silk-work than for filling spaces.
Plate is a flat wire, used chiefly in heraldic embroidery. It is laid over raised thread or string, with a stitch on each side of the thread, over which it is turned backwards and forwards till the thread is covered. In working Bullion, Purl, and Plate, the silk they are sewn with does not come into evidence at all. Strong fine thread is even better to sew them with than silk; both should be waxed.