oidery.
The pattern is followed round with a gold cord or double thread of
passing, fixed either visibly or invisibly with a couching stitch; the
work needs but an interesting design and suitable background to be most
successful. Fig. 124 illustrates a portion of a design, carried out with
gold cord upon a velvet ground, which has been further enriched by the
addition of little applied white flowers. The raised work, and that
which introduces the use of purls and bullions, is at once more
complicated, and perhaps hardly as pleasing as the simpler flat work.

[Illustration: Fig. 124.]

The method of applying the gold to the material is usually by couching
of one form or another, for most of the threads are too inflexible to
be stitched through. The ground, if it shows at all, is usually a rich
stuff, such as velvet, satin, or silk, in order to be in keeping with
the valuable thread. If the ground chosen is difficult to work upon, the
embroidery is carried out upon linen, and the finished work afterwards
applied to the ground. If both background and pattern are solidly
embroidered, linen can be used as the permanent ground. It is usual to
have two layers of material for working upon, for gold threads are heavy
and require the support of the double ground. There are several
advantages in this double material, as the old workers knew, for we find
they commonly used two. The under-layer can be a strong linen, and the
surface one silk, satin, or a fine linen, as required.

MATERIALS

A variety of metal threads are manufactured for embroidery purposes, and
they are all obtainable in gold, silver, or imitations of these;
aluminium thread has been made lately, and has the advantage of being
untarnishable, but its colour and quality do not seem quite
satisfactory, and it is not popular. The imitation threads are never
worth the using; they tarnish to a worse colour, and are more difficult
in manipulation; what goes by the name of real gold, is silver or
copper, plated with the more valuable metal. The pure gold thread is
said not to be so practical as this, being too brittle; but somehow or
other it was more successfully manufactured in the past than nowadays,
for some gold work six centuries old exhibits beautifully bright
threads.

The following list comprises the chief threads used in this work:--

_Passing._--This is a bright smooth thread, resembling in appearance a
gold wire; it consists of a narrow flat strip of g