king drawing, asks little of the worker beyond patient care: of the
designer it asks considerable knowledge.

A yet more pictorial effect is produced in much the same way, this time
in satin stitch, in Illustration 76. The artist has for the most part
drawn his shadows with crisp brush strokes, which the worker had no
difficulty in following; but there is some rounding of the birds' bodies
which a merely mechanical worker could not have got. In fact, there are
indications that this is the work more of a painter than of an
embroidress, who would have acknowledged by her stitches the feathering
of the birds' necks as well as their roundness.

[Illustration: 77. SHADING IN LONG-AND-SHORT AND SPLIT STITCHES.]

You can embroider, of course, without knowing much about drawing; but
you cannot go far in the direction of shading (not drawn for you, or
only vaguely drawn) without the appreciation of form which comes only of
knowing and understanding. There is evidence of such knowledge and
understanding in the working of the lion in Illustration 77. That is
not a triumph of even stitching; but it is a triumph of drawing with the
needle. The short satin and split stitches are not placed with the
regularity so dear to the human machine, but they express the design
perfectly. The embroiderer of that lion was an artist, perhaps the
artist who designed it. "It might be a _man's_ work," was the verdict of
an embroidress. At all events it is the work of some one who could draw,
and only a draughtsman or draughtswoman could have worked it.

This is not said wholly in praise of shading. Embroidery ought, for the
most part, to do very well without it. The point to insist upon is that,
if shading is employed at all, it should mean something, and not be mere
fumbling after form.

The charm of shading in embroidery is not the roundness of form which
you get, but the gradation of colour which it gives. 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. An artist prefers to see few shades employed, and those chosen
with judgment and placed with deliberate intention. If they mean
something, there is no harm in letting