The Flemings and Italians of the early Renaissance went further. They had a way of laying threads of gold and sewing them so closely over with coloured silk that in many parts it quite hid the gold. Only in proportion as they wanted to lighten the colour of the draperies in their pictorial embroideries did they space the stitches farther and farther apart, and let the gold gleam through. Except in the high lights it did not pronounce itself positively. The effect is not unlike what is seen in paintings of the primitive school, where the high lights of the red and blue draperies are hatched with gold. The practice of the embroiderer may be reminiscent of that, or that may be the origin of the primitive painters' convention. It is more as if the embroiderer wanted to represent a precious tissue, a stuff shot with gold.
Illustration [80] gives part of a figure worked in this way, relieved against a more golden architectural background rendered by the very same double threads of gold which run through the figures. In the architecture, however, they are couched in stitches which are never so near as to take away from the effect of the gold. The two degrees of obscuring or clouding gold by oversewing are here shown in most instructive contrast. The cords, as usual, are laid in horizontal courses. That was the convenient way of working; but it resulted in a corded look, which has very much the appearance of tapestry; and there is no doubt that resemblance to tapestry was in the end consciously sought. That the method here employed was laborious needs no saying; but it gave most beautiful, if pictorial, results.
APPLIQUÉ.
Embroidery, it has been shown, is much of it on the surface of the stuff, not just needle stitches, but the stitching-on of something—cord, gold thread, or whatever it may be. And instances have been given where the design of such work was not merely in outline, but where certain details were filled in with stitching. Yet another practice, and one more strictly in keeping with the onlaying of cord, was to onlay the solid also, applying, that is to say, the surface colour also in the form of pieces of silk cut to shape.
Patterns of this kind may be conceived as line work developing into leafy terminations, the Appliqué only an adjunct to couching (Illustration [63]); or they may be thought of as massive work eked out with line: the appliqué, that is to say, the main thing, the couching only supplementary (Illustration [92]). An intermediate kind is where outline and mass—couching and appliqué—play parts of equal importance in the scheme of design (Illustration [60]).
Couched cord or filoselle is useful in covering the raw edge of the onlay, not so much masking the joints as making them sightly.
Appliqué must be carefully and exactly done, and is best worked in a frame. It is almost as much a man's work as a woman's. Embroidery proper is properly woman's work; but here, as in the case of tailoring, the man comes in. The getting ready for appliqué is not the kind of thing a woman can do best.
The finishing may sometimes be done in the hand, and very bold, coarse work may possibly be worked throughout in the hand, and outlined with buttonhole-stitch (chain-stitch is not so appropriate); but when a couched outline is employed it must be done in a frame, and, indeed, work with any pretensions to finish is invariably begun and finished in the frame.
TO WORK APPLIQUÉ
To work appliqué you want, in fact, two frames—one on which to mount the material to be embroidered, and another on which to mount the material to be applied. The backing in each case should be of smooth holland. This is stretched on to the frame, and then pasted with stiff starch or what not; the silk or velvet is laid on to it and stroked with a soft rag until it adheres, and is left to dry gently. When dry, the outlines of the complete design are traced upon the one, and those of the details to be applied upon the other. (You may paste, of course, silks of two or three colours upon one backing for this.) The stuff to be applied is then loosened from its frame, the details are cleanly cut out with scissors, or, better still, a knife (in either case sharp), and transferred to their place in the design on the other frame. There they are kept in position by short steel pins planted upright into the stuff until you are sure they fit, and then tacked firmly down, with care that the stitches are such as will be quite covered by the final couching, chain stitch, or whatever is to be your outline.