Dorothy." What demure wasp-waisted females these works of antique art display! What foppish gallants! What trite remarks, in text both great and small, embellish them! Thus does cross-stitch link us with the past, and but for its decadence in the hands of Berlin-worsted workers, might still have held its own. The Persian, Cretan, and Algerian embroideries are executed chiefly in Persian Cross-Stitch. the varieties of cross-stitch; and very rich effects are there produced by the judicious grouping of these simple stitches, as well as by the happy choice of coloring. Persian embroidery is noticeable for the irregularity of the crossing; the stitches are taken up in groups or masses, in any direction most suitable to the design. German workers are famed for beautiful cross stitch embroidery, though the crude colors they employ often mar the beauty of their specimens. Vienna cross-stitch is a variety recently introduced by Mme. Bach, of the High School of Art Embroidery in Vienna. This consists of two stitches crossing each other, so worked as to be exactly alike on both sides of the material. Russian peasant women send out from their snow-bound homes quantities of cross-stitch embroidery, in red or blue, on linen-the result of work in the winter months. This is marked by decided originality, and oftentimes by rude vigor in design. An establishment for the sale of Russian peasants' work recently opened in Twenty-third Street, near Lexington Avenue, New York, has a most interesting variety of red and blue embroideries on linen drawn-work, lace, etc.— all wrought by the women of the poorer class, and delightful for bed and table linen. Chair backs of ivory sateen have been recently adorned with cross-stitch patterns, in silk worked on canvas, the threads afterward drawn out. A sofa cushion of white cloth has cross-stitch embroidery in silk, also worked over Varieties of the -Cushion-Stitch. and describing a set pattern-as in the illustration. A bed-hanging, designed by the poet decorator Morris, for the Hon. Mrs. Percy Wyndham, has the ground heavily worked in blue silk with cushionstitches, throwing the pattern into relief. As a woven fabric would, at a little distance, have produced identically the same effect, practical people may well wonder at the enormous waste of labor in this costly drapery. A splendid Italian wall hanging of the seventeenth century will be remembered at one of the South Kensington Exhibitions of Ancient Needlework, on which cushion - stitch ap pears as a ground for large designs in crossstitch embroidery. Cushion stitch has many varieties, including Burden-stitch, in which the stitches are of uniform length across the design, the second row started from half the depth of the preceding 227 embracing the tints of blue, pink, silver gray, and yellow. Shades of deeper red are introduced into the petals, and each form is outlined in close stem-stitch. The heraldic animal supporting the vase on either side is drawn with admirable spirit, and embroidered with scales, lozenges, basketwork, circles, and zigzags in cushion Darned Work-Society for Decorative Art. stitch and kept of the same length stitches of extreme beauty and finethroughout. A beautiful and unusual variety of cushion-stitches executed on the design, appear in the embroidered deshilado elsewhere illustrated (page 246). This method is rarely seen except in canvas-work. The conventional flower and foliage, springing from a vase in the centre, are done in soft pink and blue floss silks, in zigzag patterns alternating with diamond shapes. The vase is formed by a basket-work of stitches ness. A most brilliant apparition he is, in his coat of many colors gleaming with the iridescent lustre of ancient floss ! Small geometrical flowers of amber, blue, rose, and silver-gray make beautiful the spaces of linen left between drawn-work borders, upon this delightful and characteristic relic of old Spain. Darning-stitches for grounds, first introduced in New York by the Society of Decorative Art, is an industry of Queen Anne's time, consisting of large Darning-stitches flowers worked in outfor grounds. line, with a background darned in parallel lines with coarse silk of a contrasting color. A specimen of this work is illustrated above by a sketch from the original. A square of ivory satin bordered with olive velvet has a rich floriated pattern outlined upon it in twisted chain-stitch with dark-blue filoselle. The entire ground is darned with old gold Dacca silk. This work looks well in monochrome, ground and flowers alike; or with flowers in dull yellow and the darning in dull blue. Curtains have been made with a conventional pattern in blue, and a darned background in shaded yellows. A bed-cover, of unbleached muslin, has yellow vines and fruit cut out of serge and sewn down with crewel in button-hole stitch, the ground darned in dull yellow crewel. The same might be done in blue. Huckaback towelling has been adorned with appliqué patterns of blue serge, the ground darned in crewel of a lighter shade of blue for a tidy. A couvre-pied of ivory Turk satin has a diaper design worked in olive silk, the ground darned in soft blue. It is lightly wadded with down, and is lined with blue undressed silk. Darning-stitch is used to restore old embroideries. A number of priests' vestments, brought by Mr. Chadwick from Seville, have the ground of creamwhite satin covered with fine stitches of silk, enhancing, if possible, the rich effect of traceries wrought with gold thread, strips cut from gold foil, spangles, and small hammered ornaments of silver, with colored floss embroidery. Akin to darning-stitch is laid work, including all forms of embroidery illustration, this is simply a thick strand of double crewels laid down and stitched at regular intervals by threads crossing the couching line at right angles. Filoselle, with crewel, is used to outline patterns in appliqué. Silk cord was much employed for couching in old embroideries. Gold cord was also used. and is now. Japanese gold thread, which is gilt paper twisted over cotton, cannot be otherwise worked than in couching. This appears in old Spanish, Cretan, and Italian specimens, and is of great service in producing flat Plain couching. effects where shading is unnecessary. First lay your threads evenly from side to side of the pattern (in a line whether with warp or woof, to be decided by the pattern), then pass the Diamond, Diaper, Network, and Brick-work Couching. needle through to the back, and bring The ground of antique embroider ies may be restored by a filling of laidwork, as described above. The old and worn material should be basted on a new backing, the frayed part cut away, and a close filling, in silk or wool, laid over all the vacant space, between embroidered designs. This requires care in manipulation, but need not prove tedious. Another form of couching is found in old Turkish embroideries, worked with silk similar to our floss. The fastening 229 In net-work couching, the fastening stitches are placed diagonally instead of at right angles, forming a net-work, and are kept in place by a cross-stitch at each intersection. stitches are so taken, each is first laid on the material in even gold are "laid," in this manner, and the next three rows stitched down between the alternate lines of the cotton stuffing, so as to produce the effect of woven basket-work. The table-cover, of silk and gold embroidery upon pink satin, coming from Gallipoli, Turkey, and exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum, has gold basketstitch in the centres of the flowers. An interesting specimen of couching on the design rather than on the ground, is found in a Portuguese bedcover, of the last century, now in New York. Upon a square of coarse cotton stuff, of a beautiful cream color, are worked conventional flowers in red and salmon floss, laid on the surface and caught down from the back, having yellow centres, fastened with minute stitches of blue silk. Herringbone stitch also appears in circles around the flowers. This quilt, finished with a box-plaiting of cotton stuff, was brought from the peasant family in Portugal who had it in daily use. A Spanish altar frontal, having a design suggesting the Louis XIV. period of decoration, is embroidered on cream satin, and edged with silver lace. Upon this specimen, also, are to be seen a variety of couching-stitches within the boundaries of the design. Hangings suspended from balconies on state occasions, in Spain, are called reposteros. Upon some of these superb draperies, dating from the sixteenth century, are to be found varieties of gold couching on crimson vel vet. Basket stitch, like a wickerwork of massive gold, appears in its glory amid spangles and flowers cut from gold foil. This florid magnificence is a strong feature of all Spanish embroidery-the "Embroiderers of the King," as they are called, still producing many such examples. like this used in the religious ceremonies of Holy Week in Seville, not long ago. The most lavish and sumptuous of all their embroideries were employed for the trains of the virgins carried through the streets on illuminated platforms; and at Granada a sacristan of the cathedral took out for me and bade me handle a series of priests' vestments so heavily incrusted. with silk and gold stitching as to be cumbrous in the hand-what must they have been to wear! Spain is to-day the home of the most magnificent, if not the loveliest, of old embroideries. A portière of antique Indian embroidery has, on a ground of diapered light-blue silk, a variety of couchingstitches done in silk and gold, to fill portions of the design. The centre has a circle containing a tree with large conventional flowers in salmon red, on which perches peacock with majestic plumes. Two antelopes are introduced into this part of the composition. In each of the four corners are peacocks and other birds, with flowers, worked in floss and outlined with gold. The border is the loveliest scroll-work it is possible to imagine, enriched with floss and gold couching. This, belonging to one of the choicest collections of New York, is unique in beauty and of great age. For the benefit of the curious, we disentangle from the quaint combination of law-French and mongrel Latin, in Roger Ascham's list of Queen Elizabeth's "Apparell," an account of the royal garters. These were worked on both sides alike, "cum laid work stitched, corresponding to the methods of couching just described. They were further adorned with gold and silver lace, and had tinkling silver pendants, tufted with cherry-colored silk. Opus plumarium, or feather - stitch, takes its scholastic name from a fan I saw a great number of hangings cied resemblance to the plumage of a |