is for the most part
worked. Very effective Indian work is done of this kind--loose and
flimsy, but serving a distinct artistic purpose. It is to embroidery of
more serious kind what scene painting is to mural decoration.

[Illustration: 40. CHINESE SATIN-STITCH.]

Embroidery is often described as being in "long-and-short-stitch," a
term properly descriptive not of a stitch, but of its dimensions.
Whether you use stitches of equal or of unequal length is a question
merely of the adaptation of the stitch to its use in any given instance;
there is nothing gained by calling an arrangement of alternating
stitches, "long and short," or by calling them "plumage-stitch," or,
which is more misleading, "feather-stitch," when they radiate so as to
follow the form, say, of a bird's breast. The bodies of the birds in
Illustrations 40 and 85 are in plumage-stitch so called. This adaptation
of stitch to bird or other forms gives the effect of fine feathering
perfectly. But why apply the term "satin-stitch" exclusively to parallel
lines of stitches all of a length?

"Long-and-short-stitch," then, is a sort of satin-stitch; only, instead
of the stitches being all of equal length, they are worked one _into_
the others or _between_ them, as in the faces in Illustrations 79 and
80.

A little further removed from satin-stitch is what is known as
"split-stitch," in which the needle is brought up _through_ the
foregoing stitch, and splits it. The way of working this stitch is more
fully given on page 105.

The worker adapts, as a matter of course, the length of the stitch to
the work to be done, directing it also according to the form to be
expressed, and so arrives, almost before he is aware of it, by way of
satin-stitch, at what is called plumage-stitch.

[Illustration: 41. OFFSHOOTS FROM SATIN AND CREWEL STITCHES.]

[Illustration: 42. OFFSHOOTS FROM SATIN AND CREWEL STITCHES (BACK).]

The distinction between the stitches so far described is plain
enough, and an all-round embroidress learns to work them; but workers
end in working their own way, modifying the stitch according to the work
it is put to do, and produce results which it would be difficult to
describe and pedantic to find fault with. Even short, however, of such
individual treatment, the mere adaptation of the stitch to the lines of
the design removes it from the normal. It makes a difference, too,
whether it is worked in a frame or in the hand: in the one case you se