Artistic embroidery

Before proceeding to silk embroidery, it may be well to consider some simple rules of color, as the proper arrangement of color is of far greater importance than the regular placing of stitches, and no embroidery can be artistic without it.

An old-fashioned poet gives some good advice on this subject:

Truth in rhyme was never better brought out than in the following lines:

An eye for color is of the same nature as an ear for music—one knows intuitively what is right; but this is by no means a very common gift; and there are some rules to be observed, independently of the guidance of taste, that are within the reach of all.

Thus scarlet and yellow were never intended for close companions; brown or lilac invariably quarrel with a scarlet ground; blue and green together, or yellow and green, are like an unpleasant taste in the mouth; blue is perfectly amiable with écru (the French name for all the drabs and fawns); a cold green blue may be successfully paired with lilac; drabs with a rich brown tone in them take kindly to yellow; pink and gray are as harmonious as love-birds; scarlet affably locks arms with slate-green and red-brown; green with maize, and also with some shades of salmon; blue and maize were made for each other; lilac and green, blue and claret, are also devoted couples.

One who knows says that black should never be used next a high light; one-eighth of every object has a high light upon it, one-eighth is darkest shadow, and six parts light, or half-tint. No objects in nature are positively blue, red, or yellow, owing to two causes: one, that most objects reflect the sky; the other, that the atmosphere between the eyes of the observer and the light causes the brightness of the tints to be deadened. So that care must be taken to avoid the immediate contact of bright colors with each other when an attempt is made to imitate nature.

Shaded embroidery should be guided by the same rules that apply to water-color painting, except that greater depth and brilliancy, and consequently less delicacy, are the results in view. It requires much discrimination to give a natural hue to leaves, and, at the same time, to produce such contrasts as will give the proper relief. Portions of each should be much lighter than others; and in the grouping, a mass should be thrown into shadow under the bright leaves—the shadow being composed of dark green mixed with neutral tint.

Much may be learned in the way of color by study and observation; but to get just the right shades of even harmonious colors requires care and skill. Thus simple red may be used with pure green; but scarlet, which is red tinged with yellow, must have a blue green; crimson, which is red tinged with blue, a yellow green. All colors are darker on a light ground and lighter on a dark ground, so that tints should be selected according to the groundwork.

Position, too, must be considered; a piece of embroidery that is intended for a dark corner should have brighter colors and stronger contrasts than one which is to be placed in a full light. On a white ground very delicate tints are most suitable, while the broken grays of crash will harmonize livid colors.

Masses of blue should be avoided, as blue is a cold color; and white requires skilful management, as it should be shaded off delicately by means of tints that have a large portion of white in their composition. But all flowers of the same kind should not be worked in the same shades of color; three white flowers, for instance, of the same species and in one cluster, requiring eight shades of silk or worsted to embroider them properly, should have these shades differently arranged. For one, a greater portion of the five lightest tints would be used; for the next, the middle shades, perhaps; in the third, the darkest would be most prominent; all this would depend on the position of the flowers and the skill of the embroiderer.

Many different colors in one piece of work spoil the effect, except in particular cases; some one prevailing color should be adopted, and the rest chosen with reference to it. Some of the most beautifully colored work is done in one key of color: one color being taken as the key-note, and those shades only are used that form its component parts, or that have the original color in their composition. On gold-colored satin, for instance, nothing looks so well as a design colored in shades of russet and golden browns, introducing every now and then a lighter or darker shade of the pure ground color.

In taking green for the ground color, if a yellow green, then the highest note should be yellow; and it should be carried down through all the brown, warm, and russet greens, which owe all their warmth to yellow. If the ground is a blue green, colder greens must be used, of a sage rather than a russet tint, while the key-note is struck with a pure blue. Under this restraint, the effect, though subdued, is very agreeable.

If a pure blue is placed near a pure yellow, the effect is glaring; but when the blue is slightly toned with yellow and the yellow with blue, there is quite a different result. A strong blue and a bright red, with a yellow gleam in it, stare each other out of countenance; but a subdued russet-green as a neighbor makes them harmonious.

Purples, and all shades inclining to blue, are difficult to dispose satisfactorily—those with the least blue in them are preferable. Russet is one part blue, one part yellow, and two parts red; olive, one part blue, two parts yellow, and one part red. It is more pleasing than slate, which has two parts blue, one part yellow, and one red.

When the ground is a red plum or maroon, pure red pinks, with no shade of blue in them, will be much more harmonious than blue; but if the ground is a blue plum, pale blue will be better than pink. The shading of flowers is always in different shades of the same color; and this method applied to embroidery produces the most charming results. A pattern worked on a dark ground in a lighter shade of the same color is always pleasing; and in a small room especially a great variety of colors should be avoided. A crimson room should have chair or table cover, or tidy, in pale crimson mingled with a little pink of the same tone.

Thus after a pretty conceit, one room might be called the rose-room, being furnished with the crimson heart of that beautiful flower running through the shades of pink suggestively in the lighter portions, and “broidered over” with roses and buds where ornament is desirable; another might be the sunflower-room, with its warm golden browns and gleams of yellow, and the honest full-moon face of that plebeian blossom astonished at being “done” in silks and crewels, and set up to be looked at; while the morning-glory-room, in grays and blues, should imprison all the sunshine to light up its cold colors, and afford a congenial resting-place for its pictured blossoms.