roundness of the face (Illustration 87). But just as
there is a system of shading according to which the draughtsman makes
all his strokes in one direction (slanting usually), so the embroidress
may, if she prefer, take her stitches all one way; and in the 15th and
16th centuries the fashion was to work flesh in short-satin stitches
always in the vertical direction (Illustration 79). The term
"long-and-short-stitch" is frequently used by way of describing the
stitch. It does not, as I have said, help us much. The stitches are in
the first place only satin-stitches worked not in even rows, as in
Illustration 40, but so that there is no line of demarcation between one
row and another. And this, in the case of gradated colour, makes the
shading softer. The words long-and-short apply strictly only to the
outer row of stitches. You begin, that is to say, with alternately long
and short stitches. If you work after that with stitches of equal
length, they necessarily alternate or dovetail. If the form to be worked
necessitates radiation in the stitching, there results a texture
something like the feathering of a bird's breast (Illustration 85),
whence the name plumage-stitch, another term describing not so much a
stitch as the use of a stitch.

No matter what the stitch, one must be able to draw in order to express
form: it is rather more difficult to draw with a needle than with a pen,
that is all. True, the designer may do that for you, and make such a
workmanlike drawing that there is no mistaking it; but it takes a
skilled draughtsman to do it.

[Illustration: 76. SHADING IN SHORT STITCHES.]

In flattish decorative work, where the drawing is in firm lines, as in
Illustration 87, the task of the embroidress is relatively easy--there
is not much shading, for example, in the drapery of King Abias, and the
vine leaves are merely worked with yellower green towards the edges.
Even where there is strong shading, a draughtsman who knows his
business may make shading easy by drawing his shadows with firm
outlines. The taste of the artist who designed the roses in Illustration
75 is too pictorial to win the heart of any one with a leaning towards
severity of design; too much relief is sought; but the way he has got it
shows the master workman; he has deliberately laid in _flat_ washes of
colour, each with its precise outline, which the worker had only to
follow faithfully with flat tambour work. A design like that, given the
wor