fine
lines of voiding (Illustrations 39 and 40).

In work on a bold scale there is no difficulty about it; and it would be
remarkable that it is so seldom used, were it not that the uncertain
worker likes to have a chance of clearing up ragged edges, and that
voiding implies a broader and more dignified treatment of design than it
is the fashion to affect.

SHADING.

One arrives inevitably at gradation of colour in embroidery; the
question is how best to get it. But, before mentioning the ways in which
it may be got, it seems necessary to protest that shading is not a
matter of course. Perfectly beautiful work may be done, and ought more
often to be done, in merely flat needlework; the gloss of the silk and
its varying colour as it catches the light according to the direction of
the stitching, are quite enough to prevent a monotonously flat effect.

Still, embroidery affords such scope for gradation of colour, not,
practically, to be got by any process of weaving, that a colourist may
well revel in the delights of colour which silks of various dyes allow.
And so long as colour is the end in view there is not much danger that a
colourist will go wrong.

[Illustration: 74. PART OF A DESIGN BY WALTER CRANE.]

The use of shading in embroidery is rather to get gradation of colour
than relief of form. As to the stitch to be employed, that is partly a
personal matter, partly a question of what is to be done. The stitch
must be adapted to the kind of shading, or the shading must be
designed to suit the stitch. It makes all the difference in the world,
whether your shading is deliberately done, or whether one shade is meant
to merge into another. In the best work it is always done with decision.
There is nothing vague or casual, for example, about the shading of Mr.
Crane's animals on Illustration 74. Everywhere the shading is _drawn_,
either in lines or as a sharply defined mass. Given a drawing in which
the shadows are properly planned and crisply drawn like that, and you
may use what stitch you please.

[Illustration: 75. SHADING IN CHAIN-STITCH.]

The more natural way of shading is to let the stitches follow the lines
of the drawing, and so make use of them to express form, as with the
strokes of the pen or pencil upon paper. Thus, in mediaeval figurework
prior to the 15th century, the faces were usually done in split stitch,
worked concentrically from the middle of the cheek outward, and so
suggesting the