illustrated have been worked; the reader must worry
that out for herself. But one may just point out in passing how well the
various stitches go together in some few instances.

Nothing could be more harmonious, for example, than the combination of
knot, chain, and buttonhole stitches in Illustration 24; or of ladder,
Oriental, herring-bone, and other stitches in Illustration 72. Again, in
Illustration 85 the contrast between satin-stitch in the bird and
couched cord for the clouding is most judicious, as is the knotting of
the bird's crest. Laid floss contrasts, again, admirably with couched
gold in Illustrations 47, 48, 49, and satin-stitch with couching in
Illustration 91, where the gold is reserved mainly for outline, but on
occasion serves to emphasise a detail.

[Illustration: 73. FINE NEEDLEWORK UPON LINEN.]

Couched gold and surface satin-stitch are used together again in
Illustration 58, each for its specific purpose. The harmony between
applique work and couching or chain-stitch outline has been alluded to
already.

A danger to be kept in view when working in one stitch only is, lest it
should look like a woven textile, as it might if very evenly worked.
Some kinds of embroidery seem hardly worth doing nowadays, because they
suggest the loom. That may be a reason for some complexity of stitch, in
which lurks that other danger of losing simplicity and breadth. The
lace-like appearance of the needlework upon fine linen in Illustration
73, results chiefly from the extraordinary delicacy with which it is
done, but it owes something also to the variety of stitch and of
stitch-pattern employed in it.

OUTLINE.

The use of outline in embroidery hardly needs pointing out. It is often
the obvious way of defining a pattern, as, for example, where there is
only a faint difference in depth of tint between the pattern and its
background; in applique work it is necessary to mask the joins; and it
is by itself a delightful means of diapering a surface with not too
obtrusive pattern.

Allusion to the stitches suitable to outline has been made already (see
stitch-groups), as well as to the colour of outlining, _a propos_ of
applique. It is difficult to overrate the importance of this question of
colour in the case of outline; but there are no rules to be laid down,
except that a coloured outline is nearly always preferable to a black
one. The Germans of the 16th century were given to indulging in black
outlin