Home Arts and Grafts

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21478, 29 April 1933, Page 6 (Supplement)

Home Arts and Grafts

This embroidery, as the name suggests, comes from the town of Assisi in Italy. It was the old embroidery of that town in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and has now given rise to a local industry has been inspired by the very early examples of tho work. The designs are almost always mediaeval in character, and these include many quaint legendary beasts and birds surrounded by the most delightful bqrders. The original embroideries are all worked on white or pale cream linen, in faded blue or soft brown tones, but for modern use almost any colour can be employed. The real Assisi work is done over counted threads on evenly woven linen, with cotton or silk of about the same thickness of thread as each single thread in the material. The design is usually outlined in black, or a deeper shade of the colour used for the crossstitch filling. Tho border can be the same colour as the outline or it can match tho filled-in background. It is,

ASSISI EMBR

of course, only the background which is filled in, the design itself being merely outlined so that it stands out in bold relief on the unworked portion of the material. Two stitches are used, double-running and cross-stitch. The outline of the design and tho border are worked in double-running stitch. To do this, work one row of simple running stitches and then a second row to fill up the gaps left by the first row. The background filling consists of rows of horizontal cross-stitches worked backward and forward. Begin at -tho bottom lefthand corner and work a row of single stitches and then work a return row backward crossing each one of these. If this particular embroidery work interests you, and you should have difficulty in buying the specially-prepared transfers, you will find that material woven in checks or squares makes a very helpful and most attractive background. Palo brown cross-stitch canvas, that is not too stiff, could also bo used. Any cross-stitch design can, of course, be used, if you remember,to outline the pattern in running stitch only, filling in the background with cross-stitch.