Chats on Old Lace and Needlework

These are not _all_ the stitches in vogue during the first era of needlework pictures. A single glance at one of the early specimens, though it may not _charm_, fills one with a...

The eighteenth-century costume was particularly adapted to this pretty work. We cannot imagine the voluminous robes of Queen Mary or Queen Anne in needle-stitchery, but the soft...

No time seems to have been too long to have been spent in perfecting the petals of a rose, the loose wing of a butterfly, or to make a realistic curtain in fine Point lace stitc...

About the middle of the eighteenth century Chantilly began to produce black silk lace of very fine quality. This is practically the only black lace for which there is any market...

Even at the risk of being considered utterly unpatriotic, I cannot give much more than faint praise to the lace-making of England up to the present date, when notable efforts ar...

The great period of English embroidery is supposed to have been from the twelfth to the thirteenth century. Very little remains to show this, except a few fragments of vestments...

_Brides_ (literally "bridges").--These are the connections between the various parts of a lace design, both in Needle-point and Bobbin lace. In the former, they are made entirel...

It is almost impossible, even from the best of photographic illustrations, to learn all the intricacies of identification. The photographs clearly show style, but it needs speci...

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 26120-h.htm or 26120-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/1/2/...

Needlework as a national art is as dead as the proverbial door-nail; whether or not it ever regains its position as a craft is a matter of conjecture. Personally, I incline to t...