and; but a good workwoman (and the embroidress is
a needlewoman first and an artist afterwards, perhaps) adopts in every
case a method, and departs from it only for very good reason. It looks
as if our ancestors had set to work without system or guiding principle
at all. No doubt they got a bold and striking effect in their
bed-hangings and the like; but there is in their work a lack of that
conscious aim which goes to make art. Theirs is art of the rather
artless sort which is just now so popular. Happily it was kept in the
way it should go by a strict adherence to traditional pattern, which for
the time being seems to have gone completely out of fashion.

Quite in the traditional manner is Illustration 14. One would fancy at
first sight that the work was almost entirely in crewel-stitch. As a
matter of fact, there is little which answers to the name, as an
examination of the back of the work shows plainly enough. What the
stitches are it is not easy to say. The mystery of many a stitch is to
be unravelled only by literally picking out the threads, which one is
not always at liberty to do, although, in the ardour of research, a keen
embroidress will do it--not without remorse in the case of beautiful
work, but relentlessly all the same.

The only piece of embroidery entirely in crewel-stitch which I could
find for illustration (15) is worked, as it happens, in silk; nor was
the worker aware that in so working she was doing anything out of the
common. Another instance of crewel-stitch is given in the divided skirt,
let us call it, of the personage in Illustration 72.

Beautiful back-stitching occurs in the Italian work on Illustration 89,
and the stitch is used for sewing down the _applique_ in Illustration
94.

CHAIN-STITCH.

[Illustration: 16. CHAIN-STITCH AND KNOTS.]

CHAIN and TAMBOUR STITCH are in effect practically the same, and present
the same rather granular surface. The difference between them is that
chain-stitch is done in the hand with an ordinary needle, and
tambour-stitch in a frame with a hook sharper at the turning point than
an ordinary crochet hook. One takes it rather for granted that work
which was presumably done in the hand (a large quilt, for example) is
chain-stitch, and that what seems to have been done in a frame is
tambour work, though it is possible, but not advisable of course, to
work chain-stitch in a frame.

Chain-stitch is not to be confounded with split-stitch (see page