"SAY IT IN STITCHES"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22444, 13 June 1936, Page 23

"SAY IT IN STITCHES"

EMBLEM EMBROIDERY This season women are turning their attention to Chinese embroideries. Interest in Chinese decorative art, with its modern simplicity in pottery and porcelains, has brought the beauties of Chinese embroidery into the limelight, states a London writer. In the somewhat stark severity of the modernist room, designed in the popular offwhite and earth-toned colours which are such a feature in present-day decoration, even a single piece of embroidery in Chinese colourings and design glows like a beautiful picture. It may be in the form of a cushion, a wall hanging or one of the quaint Chinese side-table covers designed with a "fall-over" flap like an altar hanging. Embroidery in the Chinese manner offers an entirely different and rather thrilling form of this fascinating side of needlecraft. To begin with, instead of period pieces worked in wools and embroidery threads on canvas, there is the more luxuriant texture of satin or silk. Colours, instead of being subdued, are brighter and purer in tone. Stitches are entirely different. In these embroideries long and short satin stitches, stem stitching and couching are the main stitches used. With regard to- subjects, Chinese embroiderers are adepts in the art of emblematic lore, an art which may introduce a new trend in modern English embroidery, which, apart from ritual work, is mainly on "picture" lines, either conventional or naturalistic. "Emblem" embroidery is a novel idea for the embroidered gifts which will soon be in active preparation for the Christmas present season. Symbolic embroideries have been used throughout the ages for ritual pieces and royal robes of state. Modern emblem embroideries could be an adaptation of symbols to everyday life, giving the embroiderer an opportunity of creating a personal and charming interpretation of good wishes to the recipient of the gift. A slight study of Chinese embroidery will reveal many adaptable ideas for this novel form of emblematic work. Flowers are often used to give a symbolic value —the peony and magnolia, chrysanthemums and prunus blossom. Butterflies, emblems of happiness, and the crane, which stands for longevity, are other subjects. A design incorporating a play on the name of the recipient in the same way that book-plates are carried out is one way of working this idea. A posy circle of flowers, the first letter in the name of each flower spelling out a Christian name, is another. Our own popular emblems of good luck are not particularly decorative, apart from the little shamrock, but squares, circles and other conventional signs can bo worked into striking designs, which have their deeper meaning. The signs of the Zodiac might yield inspiration for birthday astrologic decorations, in which the applicable sign of the birthday month is an important part of the embroidery. Flowers of the month would be an appropriate birthday embroidery. For all their brilliance Chinese embroideries are simple in the number of colours used. The brilliance is achieved by the balance of tones and the correct harmony of the colours. A few shades of a colour, worked as though they were all one colour, give vivacity to'the designs. Another feature in Chinese embroideries is ft fine outline in a darker colour or in black. This has the effect of bringing up the beauty of the needlework, particularly in the phoenix, dragon and flower studies, which are seen so often in Chinese embroideries.