Art in Needle Work: An In-depth Book About Embroidery (Illustrated)

The purpose of this book is to look at needlework, embroidery, as a beautiful artistic endeavor in a practical way. Embroidery as a handicraft and an art and should be viewed in no other way. If it were not, why spend time writing or reading a book about it?

This book is addressed to students of embroidery, needle-workers, and designers of needlework. It sets forth to show what decorative stitching is, how it is done, and what it can do. It is illustrated by samplers of stitches; by diagrams, to explain the way stitches are done; and by examples of old and modern work, to show the artistic application of the stitches. A feature in the book is the series of samplers designed to show not only what are the available stitches, but the groups into which they naturally gather themselves, as well as the use to which they may be put: and the back of the sampler is given too: the reader has only to turn the page to see the other side of the stitching which to a needle-worker is often the more helpful. Lest
that should not be enough, the stitches are described in the text, and a marginal note shows at a glance where the description is given. Samplers and other examples of needle- work are uniformly on a scale large enough to show the stitch quite plainly. The examples of old work illustrate always, in the first place, some point of workmanship; still they are chosen with some view to their artistic interest.

Design is discussed with reference to stitch and stuff, and stitch and stuff with reference to their use in ornament. It has been endeavoured also to show the effect needle-work has had upon pattern, and the ways in which design is affected by the circumstance that it is to be embroidered.