ve inches in width.
It is what we should call a _sleazy_ material to begin with. The
strips of different colours are sewn, and very badly sewn, together,
and they are also badly woven. Too flimsy for actual wear, they are
simply admirable vehicles for colour, and to this quality alone they
owe their popularity and importance. After being sewn together, the
strips are generally embroidered in a rough way, with a constantly
repeating figure on each breadth. The colour is certainly beautiful, a
contrast of soft blues, and a selection of unapproachable
browns--yellow-browns, red-browns, green-browns and gold-browns, with
yellows of all shades, and whites of all tints, and this colour-beauty
gives them a place as portieres and curtains where they do not belong
by intrinsic or constitutional worth.

If one was intent only upon producing an imitation of the Bagdad
curtains in linsey woolsey, it would be easy to weave narrow lengths
of various colours, and by choosing those which were good contrasts or
harmonies, and embroidering them together with buttonhole-stitch, or
cat-stitch, or any ornamental stitch, to get something very like them
in effect and far better in quality. But it should be the aim of
domestic manufacture to do something which is _distinctive_, and
therefore it would be better to start with the intention of producing
the effect in one's own way. This could be done by weaving the cloth
in full width (which should, if possible, be four feet), depending
entirely upon the warp threads for colour. This, it may be remembered,
is already one of the means of variation applied to linsey woolsey in
weaving homespun dress goods; but in this case it must be carefully
chosen art-effort, using colours which are in themselves beautiful. In
depending upon the warp alone for colour the fact must be kept in mind
that it will be much obscured by the over-weaving of the wool filling.
It will be necessary, therefore, to use far stronger colours than if
they were to stand unmixed or unobscured. Vivid blue, strong orange,
flaming red and gold-brown could be used in the warp in stripes of
about ten inches in width, with two inches of dead black on the sides
and between each colour. The filling must be of one pale tint, either
an ivory white or lemon yellow, or a very pale spring green woven over
all. This would modify the violence of colour, giving an effect like
hoar frost over autumn leaves. As a simple weaving this would have a
b