Excerpt from An Embroidery BookMost people have a superstition that in knowledge of a multitude Of stitches lies the whole mystery Of needle work. This is emphatically not the case. There really is no mystery about stitches they are but the letters Of the needleworker's alphabet, and the words Of her lan guage - to be used according to her Own ideas. One may embroider poems, another may embroider prayers and praises for her church, another may beautify a fair woman's garment or sing a little song in stitches for a baby's robe, yet another may be like a treatise on sur gery, repairing and restoring that which has been damaged. But needlework does not exist for the stitches. It is the stitches Which - as they are well or ill-used express the worker, and, if she is a wise Worker, she can find out for herself most Of the stitches she needs. Nor is it necessary to be at great expense in needlework, indeed, for those who take it up as a recreative craft half the interest may lie in the fact that no material is too common or too homely to be made into something fitting and, therefore, beautiful - since the truest art is to make a thing pleasing to the eye and yet entirely suited to the purpose.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.