Brick Stitch

The Brick Stitch, also known as the Cheyenne Stitch or Comanche Stitch, is a bead weaving stitch with unknown origins in which individual beads are stacked upon each other much as bricks are stacked in a brick wall.

The technique has been used by Native Americans for many years. It has also been found in beadwork in Africa, the Middle East, and South America (Guatemalan examples use beads of size 22/0 and smaller.) [1]

As the other names imply this is an off-loom technique perfected by the Native Americans. It is a relative of another off-loom technique called Peyote stitch or Gourd Stitch. [2] A Brick Stitch pattern can be worked as a Peyote Stitch Pattern if you turn it 90 degrees.

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Underside Couching

Underside Couching - In the embroidery technique of underside couching, thread (usually gold) is laid on the surface of the ground fabric, couching threads are then passed over it. As each couching stitch is worked over the gold thread, the needle is carefully re-inserted into the hole in the backing fabric that the needle created on the way out.

The couching thread is pulled tight and a tiny loop of the gold thread from the surface drops through the hole in the backing fabric to the underside couching

This creates a hinge in the gold thread, allowing the fabric to bend and giving it a great flexibility. Fabric worked with gold thread in underside couching has much more drape than fabric with surface couched gold, thus making it a much better technique for working objects which will be worn, such as ecclesiastical vestments.

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Embroidery of Kalocsa

Embroidery of Kalocsa

The embroidery of Kalocsa belongs to folk embroidery groups which uses freehand drawings and mixed style of stitchings. This also means that in its peculiar style it is not bound to any form, color or stitching technique. Even amongst the rhythmically repeated motifs we can find variations.

The character of the original folk embroidery of Kalocsa is, that in drawing and in color the same motifs twice can't appear. There is no well known folk artist in Kalocsa who will repeat exactly a motif.

If on an embroidery of Kalocsa the pattern is symmetrical and the motif repeats itself it is not an original folk art. Even if a pattern looks symmetrical at first glance, when examined in details one can see differences in the drawing and colors of the pattern as the picture below shows it clearly.

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Broderie Perse

Broderie Perse is a method of applying a fabric, originally the colorful Chintz type fabrics of Europe, onto a background by hand sewing. This was done in order to randomly decorate it or establish a pictorial scene upon the background.

The efforts were turned into coverlets or quilts and became most popular in the 17th Century and possibly earlier in some cases with Indian Broderie Perse findings. The Chintz fabrics were used due to the firm outlines of the figures woven into the fabric, the images were not usually blended into the next image, there was clear space around where the picture could be cut out, as if it were in a coloring book with a line around the outside.

Thus when cut just outside the lines of those images, say a flower or bird, the artist would then take the cut-out motif and apply it onto the background fabric of the project with tiny stitches matching as close to the same color as possible. This technique made the end product look like the picture was printed on it. This can be seen as an early method of fabric puzzle piecing. The placement of the cut-out motifs onto the quilt or coverlet background was usually made into a breathtaking setting which one would definitely classify as an heirloom.

Broderie Perse was for show and these bedcoverings were often left unlined to be used for summer guests. Whether they were layered and quilted or not they were saved for special occasions.

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Broderie Anglaise

Broderie Anglaise, or English Embroidery is a Whitework technique, designs sewn with a white thread onto a white fabric.

It is first mentioned in books as coming to England in the 1820's. It does
not say where from, but I feel it may have developed from the fine Ayrshire
Needlework which had tiny eyelet holes worked among the delicate floral embroidery. This embroidery was time-consuming, worked by women in their
homes as poorly paid out-workers. It had raised satin-stitch and some
needle-lace fillings in the larger holes as part of the design.

It was much quicker just to work the eyelet holes on their own. Little ones are worked by piercing the cloth with a stiletto, a sharp-pointed tool, then over-sewing round the resulting hole. Then the holes became bigger, which meant they had to be cut out after sewing round the shape, circle or oval.

This was done by snipping with sharp pointed scissors, from side to side and top to bottom of the shape without cutting the outline thread. The fabric flaps were turned under, then the hole over-sewn or button-holed. Not as difficult as it sounds.

The designs were very lacy, in fact as time went on the patterns developed into cut-work, where more fabric was cut away than was left. These larger holes were always filled with needle-lace stitches, or whipped or buttonhole bars, often with picots.

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