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51. A. bullion. B. couched cord.
When a surface is covered with couching, as in the seeding of the flower in the sampler, Illustration [46], the sewing down stitches make a pattern—all the plainer there, because the stitching is in a contrasting shade of colour. It is quite permissible to call attention to the stitching if it suits your artistic purpose. To disguise it by sewing through the cord is not a workmanlike practice. A worker should frankly accept a method of work and get character out of it.
Embroidresses have a clever way of untwisting a cord before each stitch and twisting it again after stitching through it—between the strands, that is to say, in which the stitching is lost. The device is rather too clever. It shows a cord with no visible means of attachment to the ground, which is not desirable, however much desired. There is no advantage in attaching cords to the surface of silk so that they look as if they had been glued on to it. Conjuring tricks are highly amusing, but one does not think very highly of conjurers. Personally, I would much rather have seen more plainly the way the cord is sewn down in the graceful cross in Illustration [51], a design perfectly adapted to couching, and yet unlike the usual thing.
Where it is softish silk which is stitched down, it makes a great difference whether it is loosely held and tightly sewn, or the contrary. Contrast the short puffy lines nearest the corners in the sampler, Illustration [52], with the longer ones between the broad and narrow bands. The broad band is worked in rows of double filoselle, of various shades, sewn down with single filoselle. In the narrower bands twisted silk is sewn down with stitches in the direction of its twist. This is more plainly seen in the upper of the two bands, where the sloping stitches are lighter in colour than the cord sewn down.
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52. COUCHING SAMPLER.
Characteristic use is made of rather puffy couching in the ornament of the lady's dress in Miss Keighley's panel, Illustration [61], where it has very much the richness of embroidery in seed pearls.