Needlework Economies: A Book of Mending and Making with Oddments and Scraps

by Unknown

SOME PRETTY EFFECTS IN TACKING STITCH

Children’s overalls and frocks, little boys’ tunics, and blouses for the elder girls, usually need some trimming or decoration, and it is often difficult to find just the right kind. This is especially the case with coloured garments, and those for which lace is unsuitable. Many people like a little embroidery, but it is not always easy to get an entirely suitable pattern. Some require more time than the home worker is able to give, and some are more elaborate than is desirable for the garment.

A simple kind of stitchery is usually resorted to, and very often meets the case, and one may see little frocks and tunics of inexpensive materials, with quite a note of distinction given by the pretty stitching on the hems and bands.

The favourite and most frequently seen among the stitches so used, are the French knot, stem stitch and feather stitch. It is with the idea of suggesting other stitches and arrangements, that these diagrams and illustrations are given, and with attention to a very few simple directions, the most diffident worker may be sure of a good result.

One feature of decorative stitchery of this kind, is that it may also be constructional, that is, that where a hem is to be decorated, it need not first be stitched with the machine, the decoration does the work of the machine. This point is not always realised by the home worker, who usually makes the garment with the sewing machine, and then proceeds to decorate it, adding French knots and perhaps stem stitch to hide the machining.

Some machining is often necessary, but much can be dispensed with, without detriment to the garment, and this makes it possible to do, at any rate, part of the home dressmaking, away from the noise and busy atmosphere almost inseparable from a room dominated by a sewing machine.

EFFECTIVE BORDERS FOR CHILDREN’S FROCKS.

In making a little magyar overall, like that illustrated, for instance, the side seams and opening may be sewn with a machine, the hems and neck prepared as if for machining, and then the decoration applied. The home worker, whose husband has a rooted objection to having a sewing machine at work when he comes home in the evening, cuts out and machines part of her work during the day, and has only the pleasant part to do by hand in the evening, while she is free to talk, or listen to the day’s news.