5.]

A good method of filling a space with solid buttonhole stitching is
shown in fig. 56. Each row is worked into the heading of the preceding
row, and the stitches do not pierce the material except in the first row
and at the extremities of succeeding rows. They are placed rather close
together in order to completely cover the ground. The stitch is worked,
first, from left to right, then for the next row from right to left;
this is quite easy and enables the work to be continuously carried out.
Sometimes, when the first row is done, the thread is thrown across to
the side where the row began, and there made fast; then the second row
is worked with stitches which take up the thrown thread as well as the
heading of the first row. By using a more open buttonhole and thus
partly exposing the laid thread, a filling, both quick and effective, is
obtained. This is a useful method to employ when the work is done over a
padding of threads, for there is no necessity to pierce the material
except at the edges.

[Illustration: Fig. 56.]

CHAPTER VI

STITCHES--(_continued_)

Knots and Knot Stitches--Herring-bone Stitch--Feather Stitch--Basket
Stitch--Fishbone Stitch--Cretan Stitch--Roumanian Stitch--Various
Insertion Stitches--Picots.

KNOTS AND KNOT STITCHES

It would be difficult to go far in embroidery without requiring knots
for one purpose or another. They are useful in all sorts of ways, and
make a pleasant contrast to the other stitches. For the enrichment of
border lines and various parts of the work, both pattern and background,
they are most serviceable, and also for solid fillings; for such places
as centres of flowers or parts of leaves, they are again valuable. They
have been used to form a continuous outline, but owing to their tendency
to make a weak line, not frequently; indeed they usually show to better
advantage when slightly separated.

Examples are to be seen of English knotted line work in which the
knotting was executed in the thread previously to embroidering with it.
The knotting of thread was a pastime with ladies in the XVIIth century.
The thread, usually a linen one and as a rule home spun, was wound upon
a netting-needle, and by the aid of this a close series of knots was
made upon it; when finished it somewhat resembled a string of beads.
Balls of this prepared knotted thread may still be found, treasured up
in old work receptacles. When prepared it was couched on to the materi