XXXII Embroidery Suggestions for Boarding School Girl
A girl who has to make a home of her boarding school should try and make her room and little personal articles as attractive as possible. Her room is her citadel where only her bosom friends and cronies meet. One likes to feel when they enter their room that it is a place where everything is hers and every object in sight means something to her.
A girl might not like to embroider, yet there are hundreds of things that can be done without any needlework decoration, such as stencilling, cut leather or simple appliqué. It always amused me to hear a girl say, “I don’t like to embroider.” I always feel like asking her, if we are acquainted, if she knows how to embroider. You will find that in nine cases out of ten she does not. Embroidery is like anything else, you have got to know it to like it. It may be you prefer one branch to others. Some branches of this work may be tedious to you but when you stop and think what simple things are classed under embroidery you will find that you have a wide field from which to select.
It is not my object to go into details in regard to stitchery in this chapter but rather to give you some helpful suggestions in regard to knowing what to make and what colours to use. The stitches to be used are fully described in the previous chapters.
The first thing to consider is, are you going to have a bedstead or a couch in your room? Make it the latter unless you have a broad window seat that you can heap up with pillows. No room at a boarding school or college is complete without a half a dozen pretty pillows. When the chairs give out you can use the cushions, Japanese fashion, on the floor. Some girls like to carry their whole room out in cretonne, which is very pretty and dainty if you can afford it. Cretonne covers last about a year and then they get faded and dusty, while a linen background embroidered will last for many years. It may need laundering but it will stand any amount of that. If the embroidery fades a little that also is no drawback as it takes the effect of newness from the room. A room ought to look as if people lived in it and enjoyed it and not as if it were an exhibition room in some department store. Don’t think I am trying to encourage untidiness but let the things be used and enjoyed.
When I was about your age for several weeks I spent my spare time embroidering a centre piece for my auntie’s dining room table taking care to get just the right colours that would look well with her every day china. It nearly broke my heart when it was finished to have her use it only for state occasions. If my cousins do not use it any more than auntie did it will last for hundreds of years, or be thrown into the rag bag by the next generations if they don’t like it. Enjoy all the pretty things that you possess if they are appropriate for the use you intend them for.
Have you ever heard the story of the little dirty boy of the slums who was given a new white tie by his teacher? He had first to wash his hands before he touched it and then he washed himself to wear it and asked his mother for a clean shirt so that everything would go with the tie? Do you know that if you have one beautiful thing in your room of which you are very proud you too will see that all the things around it set off its beauty?
For the girl who has a window seat in a room and wants to keep her room dainty and bright there is nothing as pretty as the lingerie pillow. It may be made of heavy white linen or lawn as you desire and can be oblong, round or square. The cushion is covered in any colour that you prefer and the white top embroidered with large eyelets, Roman cut work, Hardanger or drawn work so that the colour will appear through the openings. Some of the handsomest imported pillows have motifs of real Filet, Irish Crochet or Cluny lace. These motifs are very expensive and not really necessary. The back and front of the linen cover are scalloped on the edges and half an inch above this scalloping a row of large eyelets is worked at intervals. The back and front are laced together with ribbons the same shade as the coloured covering. For a pink and blue room the cushion can be covered with pink and the lingerie slip laced with blue. For a square pillow plan the design on a square and arrange one in each corner and one in the direct centre.
These slips will require frequent laundering.
The lithographed pillow is a thing to be avoided by a girl of refined taste. You would not hang lithograph posters in your bedroom so why feel that it is all right to buy a lithograph pillow?
The chief point to remember in getting little accessories for your room is to keep the colouring as harmonious as possible. Avoid getting the popular things of to-day which are apt to be an eyesore to you to-morrow.
Do not decide quickly to carry out your room in school colours, there will probably be a dozen of the girls who will do this very thing and you will be tired of it before your course is through. A fraternity pillow is to be expected as there are dozens of ways that it may be treated and look quite different from the other girls’ pillows.
The general way in which a school or fraternity pillow is made is to cut out of felt the letters, figures and any design that is to be placed on it. The background may be broadcloth, ladies’ cloth or felt. Use one of the school or fraternity colours for the appliqué and the other for the background.
One of the handsomest fraternity pillows I ever saw, was one belonging to a Hamilton College man. Hamilton’s colours are buff and bright deep blue. The fraternity’s colours were black and gold. A handsome piece of Hamilton blue broadcloth was selected for the background. The fraternity pin was reproduced in colour in fine filo silk. The gold silk was a perfect match to the gold in the pin. Even the background of the pin, which was black enamel, was represented by very fine Kensington stitches. The rope-like edge of the pin was reproduced on the pillow by little rope-like sections heavily padded and worked in gold silk. On the back of the pillow were his initial and his class year below. No beruffled ribbons or gaudy cord detracted from its richness. It was a square cushion and its only finish was a large button in each corner where the end was gathered and tucked in to give a round effect.
The school girl of to-day is learning to eliminate the unnecessary trumpery things that cheapen the room and serve as dust gatherers. Outside of the pillow, bed or table covers and an occasional bag for fancy work, laundry or gloves there is no ornate display of handwork. Even the walls are left bare with the exception of a framed print or a few family photographs.
Try if possible and see if you can get a plain paper for your wall. More than one really charming room is spoiled by having an atrocious paper on it. It is really impossible to try to be artistic with an ugly wall paper.
Since stencilling has become so popular, it is not an uncommon thing to have the entire room stencilled.
Suppose you had planned to have your room in lilac, green and light gray. White can be substituted for the gray but it soils more readily than the latter. The floor should be polished and a couple of small rugs or one larger one be used on the floor. The lilac shade should predominate in the rug. The covers should be of the gray or white with a stencilled design in green and lilac. A pretty way to treat the pillow is to get inexpensive lilac material of a coarse texture. Cut a square about fourteen or fifteen inches. Cut four strips of white or gray five inches wide by twenty-five inches long. These strips should be finer than the lilac or of a different weave. Baste one strip on each side of the lilac square. Mitre the strips at the corners. A design is then stencilled on the four strips in lilac and green. The backing of the pillow should be in plain lilac.
If preferred a striped lilac and white piece of material can be used for the centre and back.
For the girl who is fond of initials or monograms I would suggest that the cover be hemstitched and a wreath selected in different sizes appropriate to the article on which it is to be used. These wreaths can be carried out in colour or the background may be coloured and the wreaths white. Inside of the wreath work your monogram or initial. If you desire a Dutch room, carry out this scheme in Delft blue material and have a dark set of Mission furniture.
Nile green linen with wreaths of conventionalized rosebuds or daisies, worked in shades of pink, or white and yellow, suggests a French room, with a brass bedstead. As I have stated in the chapter on initials, the stem stitch is pretty for working single lines of a design that is carried out in satin-stitch.
Stem stitch is too slow a method however to embroider school linens, and I would suggest using a substitute that has the effect and yet does not require the time. A row of outlining is made, and then turn the work back in the same manner, this time instead of working through the material, catch the places where the two successive stitches of the first row overlap (Figure 269.)
Another wrinkle you might be glad to hear of and possibly want to put in practice is how to clean a daintily embroidered piece without washing it, such as a pincushion or pillow top. School is not like home where you can be sure a piece sent to the laundry will have proper attention. Another drawback is that all extras have to be well paid for. If the piece is thickly covered with white talcum powder and allowed to stand without disturbing it for forty-eight hours, the embroidery will emerge almost as clean as if it had been laundered.
Now then there are the curtains for your room. You may be fortunate enough to have a room with dainty dotted swiss or dimity curtains that will go very nicely with the things you are planning and then again you may be inflicted with a pair of cheap imitation lace curtains. If you can possibly afford it change them as soon as possible. Personally I would rather have no curtains than the wrong ones. Dimity, dotted swiss, scrim, plain net or grass linen are materials that are inexpensive as well as artistic. Of course you can make them as fancy as you wish. Any of the above mentioned materials can be stencilled. Rick-rack braid, which is a wavy braid, can be used to edge the net curtains or a Connemara lace design is also appropriate.
A narrow crochet edge can be used on the edge of the scrim curtains or a narrow border of drawn work can be used.
Shadow work is effective on dimity or dotted swiss curtains. Another pretty stitch very similar to the shadow stitch is the skeleton stitch. Instead of the work being on the wrong side it all appears on the right. Work a row of very fine running stitches on the right side. Fagot stitch from side to side catching the thread into the running stitches. The work is done from the centre of the flower to the tip of the petal. Do not end your thread but weave over and under the fagotting stitch to the end of the petal, leaf or space on which you are working.
The curtains may be sash lengths or may be the full length of the window but do not make them longer than to reach the sill.