Excerpt: ...while its owner was resting, saving her all personal responsibility about her mending. When the old lady finally died, another owner claimed this charmed needle, and began at once to test its powers. But, do Page 189 what she would, she was unable to force a thread through its obstinate eye. At last, after trying all possible means to thread the needle, she took a magnifying glass to examine and see what the impediment was, and, lo! the eye of the needle was filled with a great tear,-it was weeping for the loss of its old mistress, and no one was ever able to thread it again! Embroidery is usually regarded as strictly a woman's craft, but in the Middle Ages the leading needleworkers were often men. The old list of names given by Louis Farcy has almost an equal proportion of workers of both sexes. But the finest work was certainly accomplished by the conscientious dwellers in cloisters, and the nuns devoted their vast leisure in those days to this art. Fuller observes: "Nunneries were also good shee-schools, wherein the girls of the neighbourhood were taught to read and work. that the sharpnesse of their wits and suddennesse of their conceits (which even their enemies must allow unto them!) might by education be improved into a judicious solidity." In some of these schools the curriculum included "Reading and sewing, threepence a week: a penny extra for manners." An old thirteenth century work, called the "Kleine Heldenbuch," contains a verse which may be thus translated: "Who taught me to embroider in a frame with silk? And to draw and design the wild and tame Beasts of the forest and field? Also to picture on plain surface: Page 190 Round about to place golden borders, A narrow and a broader one, With stags and hinds lifelike." A study of historic embroidery should be preceded by a general knowledge of the principle stitches employed. One of the simplest forms was chain stitch, in which one stitch was taken through the loop of the stitch...
