[AN EMBROIDERED BABY’S CARRIAGE COVERLID OF HOUSE FLANNEL.]
I was recently asked by a lady friend to design her a simple piece of embroidery for her child’s pram. The chief thing was, that the design was not to be elaborate, as there was very little time to work it.
The illustration here given is the design I made, but it has a very different appearance in black and white to what it had when worked in two tones of blue worsted on house flannel. Still, those readers who do embroidery will know what allowances to make.
I sketched the design right away in charcoal, and anyone at all accustomed to using a pencil will have no difficulty in doing this. Divide your material in half, and then draw a line in the middle horizontally, and others above and below this. These lines will guide you in getting both sides fairly alike, for, so long as the principal lines are symmetrical, it is enough. I found you can easily sketch in vine charcoal (that is the fine kind) on flannel and it easily dusts off afterwards.
The whole of the forms were produced in outline, and to show the sort of stitch, I have given a leaf full size. The ground is soon covered in this way, and it hasn’t a cheap look either. The fault many embroiderers make in carrying out a design is that they miss the “swing” of the lines, get broken-backed curves and clumsy-looking details. To obviate this you ought to keep looking at your work as a whole. Dwelling too long on any part of the design is likely to upset the balance of the whole.
It is obvious that in the design given the stems are the first features to be worked, as the leaves and flowers merely grow from them and are of secondary importance. It will add to the grace of the design to get the lower part of the stems gradually thicker, say two strands wide towards the base, just as in nature we find a plant gradually thickening as it nears the root.
It will be noticed that a separate border is designed for the piece at the top which turns over. The coverlid should have a worked edging, and to get this even a few niches should be spaced out and drawn on a piece of tracing paper and then pricked over with a coarse needle.