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81. CHINESE FIGURES.

THE DIRECTION OF THE STITCH.

The effect of any stitch is vastly varied, according to the use made of it. Satin-stitch, it was shown ([38]), worked in twisted silk, ceases to have any appearance of satin; and it makes all the difference whether the stitches are long or short, close together or wide apart. More important than all is the direction of the stitch. By that alone you can recognise the artist in needlework.

The DIRECTION of the stitch deserves consideration from two points of view—that of colour and that of form. First as to colour. It is not sufficiently realised that every alteration in the direction of the stitch means variety of tone, if not of tint. Take a feather in your hand, and turn it about, so that now one side of the quill now the other catches the light; or notice the alternate stripes of brighter and greyer green on a fresh-trimmed lawn, where the roller has bent the blades of grass first this way and then that. So it is with the colour of silken stitches. The pattern opposite ([82]) looks as if it had been embroidered in two shades of silk; in the work itself it has still more that appearance; but it is all in one shade of brownish gold: the difference which you see is merely the effect of light upon it. The horizontal stitches, as it happens, catch the light; the vertical ones do not. Had the light come from a different point, the effect might have been reversed. If there had been diagonal stitches from right to left, they would have given a third tint; and, if there had been others from left to right, they would have given a fourth.

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82. INFLUENCE OF STITCH-DIRECTION UPON COLOUR.

Suppose a pattern in which the leaves were worked horizontally, the flowers vertically, and the stalks in the direction of their growth, all in one stitch and in one colour, there would be a very appreciable difference in tone between leaves, flowers, and stalks. In gold, the difference would be yet more striking. And that is one reason why gold backgrounds are worked in diapers; not so much for the sake of pattern as to get variety of broken tint.