The Book of Needlework

The Book of Needlework

Award Winning Designs & Ideas For Your Needleworking Projects. An A-Z Needlework Course That Will Guide You To Start Creating Your Own Needlework Masterpieces. The techniques and styles suggested are as simple and straightforward as possible, so you can learn it easily as well as to become prepared, to attempt intelligently much more difficult tasks.

The material of the book is arranged so as to avoid laying down hard-and-fast rules with regard to non-essential things. For the sake of clearness, Sewing, Cutting Out, Decoration, and Repairing have been dealt with in separate sections, although in practical work they cannot be separated. In each section, the possibility of gradation from the simplest elements to the most difficult is made clear.

Needlework Introduction

Needlework is one of the most valuable forms of handwork practised in schools. Many other forms are taught chiefly on account of the muscular or the intellectual training they provide, the actual exercises performed in school being rarely continued in after life; while needlework, besides having considerable value as a means of education, is also of the greatest practical value after school days are over.

In common with other forms of handwork, needlework makes an appeal to the understanding and the imagination, as well as to the hand and eye. According to the character of the worker, the intellectual or the mechanical side of the subject will appeal more strongly. 

The intellectual worker may plan and carry out ingenious ideas in work lacking perfection of stitchery or daintiness of finish, while the mechanical worker may produce beautiful work by blindly following directions, or by copying. 

Needlework- teaching in schools aims at producing workers who combine to a reasonable degree thoughtful and beautiful work. That is to say, in school, needlework should be a true handicraft, for which imagination and an appreciation of the beautiful are required, as well as understanding and practical skill. 

Indeed, the patient, diligent work necessary for the acquisition of practical skill will be lacking if interest is not present; and interest springs from the emotions rather than from the intelligence, from the imagination of the finished work rather than from the knowledge of its details. 

It is beginning at the wrong end to keep children working at mere practice pieces until they have gained sufficient ability to make some article of real importance. The short time allotted to needlework in schools makes it almost impossible to reach any sort of perfection in stitchery, but more will be achieved if the pupil

is so interested that she puts her whole mind into her work.