thus left with dark-red ribbon of the same width, woven in and out in
regular spaces, and at each corner tie the ribbon in a graceful knot
with drooping ends.

ANOTHER TABLE-COVER.

This cover is made of pale-brown Turkish toweling. Cut a piece of
the size to suit your table, and baste all round it, first a row of
scarlet worsted braid, then of olive, then of yellow, leaving spaces
each an inch and a half wide between the rows. Cat-stitch the braids
down on both edges with saddlers' silk, and feather-stitch between
them in silks, choosing colors which harmonize, and turning the whole
into a wide stripe brilliant and soft at the same time. The choice and
placing of the colors will be excellent practice for your eye, and
after a little while you will be able to tell, as soon as a couple
of inches are done, if you are putting the right tint into the right
place. It is infinitely more interesting to feel your way thus through
a piece of work than to follow any set pattern, however pretty, and it
is far more cultivating to the taste.

A PAPER TRANSPARENCY.

Take a piece of white, or tinted, or silver paper, exactly ten and a
half inches square. Fold it double diagonally. Fold it double again.
Fold it double once more.

You will now have a triangular-shaped form of eight thicknesses. Now
lay this folded piece on a pine table, or on a smooth piece of pine
board. Next, lay evenly over it, so that it will fit exactly, the
"pattern of transparency," or an exact tracing from it. When so
placed, secure them firmly to the board by pins driven in at each
corner. Now, with a very sharp pen-knife follow and cut _through to
the board_ the lines of the pattern, so as to cut out all the portions
that show black in the design. When this is all done, pull out
the pins, open your folded paper, and you will have a square form
beautifully figured in open-work. It should be laid between two sheets
of white paper and carefully pressed with a hot iron, and then it can
be lined with black or fancy tissue paper, and hung against a pane in
the window as a "transparency;" or you may use it as a picture-frame,
inserting an engraving or photograph in the center.

The original, from which our pattern is taken, was cut during the late
war by a young Union soldier while in Libby prison.

[Illustration: PATTERN OF PAPER TRANSPARENCY.]

SHAWL-BAGS.

These bags are capital things to save a shawl from the dust of a
journey, and, if of good