a leaf to be worked. You begin by outlining it; if it
is a wide leaf, you further work a centre line where the main rib would
be, and then work row within row of stitches until the space is filled.
If on arriving at the point of your leaf, instead of going round the
edge, you work back by the side of the first row of stitching, there
results a streakiness of texture, apparent in the stem on Illustration
13. What you get is, in effect, a combination of crewel and outline
stitches, as at J, which in the other case only occurs in the centre of
the shape where the files of stitches meet.

To represent shading in crewel-stitch, to which it is admirably suited
(A, Illustration 41), it is well to work from the darkest shadows to the
highest lights. And it is expedient to map out on the stuff the outline
of the space to be covered by each shade of thread. There is no
difficulty then in working round that shape, as above explained.

In solid crewel the stitches should quite cover the ground without
pressing too closely one against the other.

[Illustration: 15. CREWEL-STITCH IN TWISTED SILK.]

It does not seem that Englishwomen of the 17th century were ever very
faithful to the stitch we know by the name of crewel. Old examples of
work done entirely in crewel-stitch, as distinguished from what is
called crewel work, are seldom if ever to be met with. The stitch occurs
in most of the old English embroidery in wool; but it is astonishing,
when one comes to examine the quilts and curtains of a couple of hundred
years or so ago, how very little of the woolwork on them is in
crewel-stitch. The detail on Illustration 13 was chosen because it
contained more of it than any other equal portion of a handsome and
typical English hanging; but it is only in the main stem, and in some of
the outlines, that the stitch is used. And that appears to have been the
prevailing practice--to use crewel-stitch for stems and outlines, and
for little else but the very simplest forms. The filling in of the
leafage, the diapering within the leaf shapes, and the smaller and more
elaborate details generally were done in long-and-short-stitch, or
whatever came handiest. In fact, the thing to be represented, fruit,
berry, flower, or what not, seems to have suggested the stitch, which it
must be confessed was sometimes only a sort of scramble to get an
effect.

Of course the artist always chooses her stitch, and she is free to alter
it as occasion may dem