e it.

* * * * *

We have now named the principal stitches used in hand embroidery,
whether to be executed in crewel or silk.

There are, however, numberless other stitches used in crewel
embroidery: such as ordinary stitching, like that used in plain
needlework, in which many designs were formerly traced on quilted
backgrounds--others, again, are many of them lace stitches, or forms
of herringbone, and are used for filling in the foliage of large
conventional floriated designs, such as we are accustomed to see in
the English crewel work of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on
a twilled cotton material, resembling our modern Bolton sheeting.

It would be impossible to describe or even enumerate them all; as
varieties may be constantly invented by an ingenious worker to enrich
her design, and in lace work there are already 100 named stitches,
which occasionally are used in decorative embroidery. Most of these,
if required, can be shown as taught at the Royal School of
Art-Needlework, and are illustrated by samplers.

[Decoration]

[Decoration]

CHAPTER IV.

FRAMES AND FRAMING.

Before proceeding to describe the various stitches used in frame
embroidery, we will say a few words as to the frame itself, the manner
of stretching the material in it, and the best and least fatiguing
method of working at it.

The essential parts of an embroidery frame are: first, the bars, which
have stout webbing nailed along them, and mortice holes at the ends;
second, the stretchers, which are usually flat pieces of wood,
furnished with holes at the ends to allow of their being fastened by
metal pegs into the mortice holes of the bars when the work is
stretched.

In some cases the stretchers are fastened into the bars by strong iron
screws, which are held by nuts.

FRAMING.

In choosing a frame for a piece of embroidery we must see that the
webbing attached to the sides of the bar is long enough to take the
work in one direction. Begin by sewing the edge of the material
closely with strong linen thread on to this webbing. If the work is
too long to be put into the frame at one time (as in the case of
borders for curtains, table-covers, &c.), all but the portion about to
be worked should be rolled round one bar of the frame, putting silver
paper and a piece of wadding between the material and the wood, so as
to prevent its being marked.

The stretchers should then be put in