Fig. 8.Fig. 8.
Whenever you find any pretty outline pictures, whether figures, flowers, or little slate pictures, see if they can be used for stem-stitch embroidery. They are just what you want for doyleys, or for squares, like tiles, to insert into brackets, and it will be much pleasanter for you to find your own designs. Doyleys can be cut from eight to twelve inches square, and they should be worked and pressed before fringing. Anything worked in cotton or wools should be pressed; but if worked in silks, it should be pressed as little as possible. Doyleys for common use are made of coarse linen or duck, white or gray, and are worked in crewels, outline crewels, or embroidery cottons. Either red or brown cotton will wash well. Dainty doyleys, only intended to keep very choice china from being scratched by the finger-bowls, are made of exquisitely fine linen, first washed to remove the dressing, and wrought in silks that have been scalded. Fine sewing silk, a single strand of letter D button-hole twist (this silk is twisted of three strands), or a single thread of "filoselle," or filling silk, are good for this work.
Fig. 9.
For your first half-dozen doyleys in coarse linen or duck get your little sister's set of slate pictures: a coffee-pot, a clock—any picture will do, no matter what it is, so long as the lines are few and simple, and tell their own story. You want every one to see instantly that your pear with two leaves is a pear, and not a pumpkin. Of course you can not see to trace the design through your thick linen, so trace it off neatly on a piece of thin paper, and prick the lines of your tracing carefully with a fine needle. Place this pricked pattern, rough side uppermost, in the middle or in one corner of your linen, just where it will look best, not forgetting to allow for fringe. Then rub a little charcoal powder over the pricked pattern with a wad of soft cotton-wool. Lift off the tracing carefully, and follow the dotted charcoal lines with a soft sharp pencil or with a pen dipped in liquid bluing. Don't smudge your work by resting your hand on the charcoal powder. When you have drawn over all the lines, blow off the powder, and rap the linen smartly on the back two or three times to get thoroughly rid of the charcoal. If you know how to draw, so much the better: trust your eye, and do away with tracings altogether.
The coarse pictures of which I have been speaking look best when worked in but one or two colors at the most. If you like Japanese pictures, as I hope you do, you can make a set of birds (see Fig. 7), worked all in one color, or of little figures (see Fig. 8) in bright-colored silks. You can find such designs in Japanese drawing-books for sale at the Japanese shops, on advertisement cards, or on fans. Japanese figures may be brightly colored, if you like; but in working outline pictures like Bo-peep (Fig. 9), or like Miss Greenaway's (Young People No. 51, p. 753), one or two of which might be worked, use several shades of dull blues, brick reds, or gold browns, remembering that the outlines of clothes and hair must be darker than those of the flesh.