Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It illustrates the various ways of laying. In the leaf the floss is sewn down with split-stitch, which forms the veining. Elsewhere it is kept in place by "couching," a process presently to be described. For the outlines, split-stitch and couching are employed. The last row of laid work in the grounding is purposely pulled out of the straight by the couching in order to give a waved edge.
But the trailing spirals of split-stitch which play about the applied spots in many a mediæval altar cloth hold their own quite well enough to show that silk can be worked straight on to the velvet. That gold may be equally well worked straight on to velvet may be seen in any Indian saddle cloth. Heavy work of this kind may be rather man's work than woman's; but that is not the point.
This adaptation of stitch to bird or other forms gives the effect of fine feathering perfectly. But why apply the term "satin-stitch" exclusively to parallel lines of stitches all of a length? A little further removed from satin-stitch is what is known as "split-stitch," in which the needle is brought up through the foregoing stitch, and splits it.
The term split-stitch describes no new stitch, but a particular treatment to which a crewel or a satin stitch is submitted. The foregoing summaries of stitches are only by way of suggestion, something to set the embroidress thinking for herself. She must choose her own method; but it would help her, I think, to schedule the stitches for herself according to her own ways and wants.
This may be very delicately and subtly got by split-stitch, which renders that stitch so valuable in the rendering of flesh tints. But the blending of colour into colour which is universally admired is not quite so admirable as people think. One may easily employ too many shades of colour, easily merge them too imperceptibly one into the other, getting only unmeaning softness.
In working in the hand, you take a rather shorter stitch back than in crewel-stitch, piercing with the needle the thread which is to form the next stitch. In working on a frame, you bring your needle always up through the last-made satin-stitch in order to start the next. Whichever way it is done, split-stitch is often difficult to distinguish without minute examination from chain-stitch.
Word Of The Day