work it
_over_ a silken or other surface; and there is a kind of embroidery
which only floats on the surface of the material without penetrating it.
A fragment of last century silk given in Illustration 35 shows plainly
what is meant.

[Illustration: 3. STITCHING ON A SQUARE MESH.]

Embroidery is enrichment by means of the needle. To embroider is to work
_on_ something: a groundwork is presupposed. And we usually understand
by embroidery, needlework in thread (it may be wool, cotton, linen,
silk, gold, no matter what) upon a textile material, no matter what. In
short, it is the decoration of a material woven in thread by means still
of thread. It is thus _the_ consistent way of ornamenting stuff--most
consistent of all when one kind of thread is employed throughout, as in
the case of linen upon linen, silk upon silk. The enrichment may,
however, rightly be, and oftenest is, perhaps, in a material nobler than
the stuff enriched, in silk upon linen, in wool upon cotton, in gold
upon velvet. The advisability of working upon a precious stuff in thread
_less_ precious is open to question. It does not seem to have been
satisfactorily done; but if it were only the background that was worked,
and the pattern were so schemed as almost to cover it, so that, in fact,
very little of the more beautiful texture was sacrificed, and you had
still a sumptuous pattern on a less attractive background--why not? But
then it would be because you wanted that less precious texture there.
The excuse of economy would scarcely hold good.

In the case of a material in itself unsightly, the one course is to
cover it entirely with stitching, as did the Persian and other
untireable people of the East. But not they only. The famous Syon cope
is so covered. Much of the work so done, all-over work that is to say,
competes in effect with tapestry or other weaving; and its purpose was
similar: it is a sort of amateur way of working your own stuff. But in
character it is no more nearly related to the work of the loom than
other needlework--it is still work _on_ stuff. For all-over embroidery
one chooses, naturally, a coarse canvas ground to work on; but it more
often happens that one chooses canvas because one means to cover it,
than that one works all over a ground because it is unpresentable.

Embroidery is merely an affair of stitching; and the first thing needful
alike to the worker in it and the designer for it is, a thorough
acquaintance with the