Embroidery Definitions — definitions of embroidery techniques, stitches and needlework terms from Apparel Search
Surface embroidery is any form of embroidery in which the pattern is worked using decorative stitches and laid threads on top of the foundation fabric or canvas rather than through the fabric; it is contrasted with canvas work. Much free embroidery is also surface embroidery, as are a few forms of counted-thread embroidery such as cross stitch.
Much free embroidery is also surface embroidery, as are a few forms of counted-thread embroidery such as cross stitch.
Forms of surface embroidery include:
Examples of surface embroidery include:
| The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Surface embroidery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). 9/5/06 |
|
|
Embroidery's family names answer different questions, and surface embroidery is where that becomes clearest. Counted versus free describes how a stitch finds its place — by the fabric grid or by a drawn design. Surface versus canvas describes where the finished work lives — as a layer on top of a foundation, or as yarn passed through an open mesh that becomes part of the structure. Because the questions are different, the answers combine: crewel is free and surface; cross stitch is counted and surface; needlepoint is counted and canvas; appliqué is free and surface, with its pattern carried by applied cloth as much as by stitches. Reading any technique's two coordinates predicts most of its behavior — its tools, its pattern sources and its failure modes — better than any single label does.
A surface layer is independent of the ground's structure, so it can do things through-the-fabric work cannot. Laid threads and couching can run in any direction at any scale without regard to warp and weft; applied fabrics in appliqué bring their own color and weave; raised stumpwork can be planted into the surface on wires. The ground's job reduces to support — it must be firm enough to carry the stitching without puckering, as crewel's closely woven linen is — and to provide a background tone where the design leaves it bare. Monumental narrative embroidery exploits exactly this freedom: the Bayeux and Quaker tapestries could be designed as continuous drawings and stitched as pictures precisely because their stitches answer to the drawing on the surface, not to a mesh underneath.
Working on top of the fabric does not free the stitcher from the fabric. A ground too loosely woven lets surface stitches sink and spread; too stiff a ground resists the needle and tires the hand; and a ground whose color fights the design cannot be covered everywhere. Surface traditions therefore have characteristic pairings — wool on linen, silk on satin grounds, laid metal thread on vestment fabrics — each ground chosen to carry its surface layer. The surface is where the picture lives, but the ground decides whether the picture survives.
In surface embroidery the pattern is worked with decorative stitches and laid threads on top of the foundation fabric, following a design on the surface. In canvas work the yarn is stitched through the canvas mesh itself, counted intersection by intersection, and the canvas grid dictates the pattern.
Appliqué, art needlework, crewel embroidery, cross stitch, Jacobean embroidery and stumpwork are forms of surface embroidery, and the Bayeux tapestry and Quaker tapestry are major examples. The category overlaps free embroidery heavily, since both describe work governed by a surface design rather than by the fabric's weave.
Yes, a few forms cross the line: cross stitch is counted by fabric threads, yet its pattern sits on the surface as a decorative layer rather than being built through a canvas mesh. The categories describe different things — surface describes where the work sits, counted describes how stitches are placed.