hey look as
if they had been glued on to it. Conjuring tricks are highly amusing,
but one does not think very highly of conjurers. Personally, I would
much rather have seen more plainly the way the cord is sewn down in the
graceful cross in Illustration 51, a design perfectly adapted to
couching, and yet unlike the usual thing.

Where it is softish silk which is stitched down, it makes a great
difference whether it is loosely held and tightly sewn, or the contrary.
Contrast the short puffy lines nearest the corners in the sampler,
Illustration 52, with the longer ones between the broad and narrow
bands. The broad band is worked in rows of double filoselle, of various
shades, sewn down with single filoselle. In the narrower bands twisted
silk is sewn down with stitches in the direction of its twist. This is
more plainly seen in the upper of the two bands, where the
sloping stitches are lighter in colour than the cord sewn down.

[Illustration: 52. COUCHING SAMPLER.]

Characteristic use is made of rather puffy couching in the ornament of
the lady's dress in Miss Keighley's panel, Illustration 61, where it has
very much the richness of embroidery in seed pearls.

It was a common practice in Germany in the 16th century to work in solid
couching upon cloth, employing a twisted thread and sewing it with
stitches in the direction of the twist, so that at first sight one does
not recognise it as couching. It looks like rather coarse stitching in
the direction of the forms, and expresses shading very well. The cloth
ground accounts, perhaps, for the choice of method: the material is not
otherwise a pleasant one to embroider upon.

A rather earlier German method was to couch in parallel lines of white
upon white linen, and so get relief and texture but no modelling, though
the drawing was helped by varying the direction of the parallel lines.

The entire surface of a linen ground was sometimes covered with couched
threads of silk or fine wool--some of it in vertical and horizontal
lines, some of it in the direction of the pattern. This, again, was a
German practice, as may be seen in the Hildesheim Cope at South
Kensington.

All-over couching may be used with advantage to renew the ground of
embroidery so worn as to be unsightly; and is more lasting than
laid-work for the purpose. It is laborious to do, but more satisfactory
when done than remounting; and one or the other is a necessity
sometimes. The effect of age is, up