Design your own embroidered doily

Original wording

Materials: Imitation Butchers' Linen 9" × 9"; white luster cotton; needle No. 5. An exercise in paper cutting for the doily design. Have pupils provide themselves with ten or twelve pieces of paper eight inches square for practice cutting. Fold the first paper three times and cut a convex, concave or compound curve from corner to corner. Open and study these curved lines and select the most graceful. Cut again making corrections. Cut a design in straight lines. Cut one composed of both straight and curved lines. Do not work haphazard, but criticise, compare and reject. The surface requires little decoration if the doily is pleasing in outline. That which is placed upon it should have some relation to the outline. Study the space to be decorated and how it can be divided or ornamented by lines, curved or straight, that may serve as a real decoration, but avoid too elaborate designs. Before beginning the doily have a finished pattern. The pattern may be transferred to the cloth by tracing the pattern with a hard pencil, using carbon paper between pattern and cloth, or the pattern may be pinned on and the outline drawn and the design put on freehand. To work the Doily. Finish the edge with the blanket stitch. See "Blanket Stitch," page 73. Work the lines of the design with the Kensington Outline Stitch. Blanket Stitch. —The blanket stitch, often erroneously called the buttonhole stitch, is used for finishing raw edges. It is worked from left to right, and the buttonhole stitch from right to left. A. To Finish the Edge of Flannel or Heavy Cloth: Insert the needle at a point the desired depth of the blanket stitch and take one or two running stitches to the edge of the cloth, which will bring the thread in position for the first stitch. Make the first blanket stitch over these running stitches. Holding the edge of the cloth toward you insert the needle at the same point as before and bring the needle out over the thread and draw the loop thus made to the edge of the cloth. Repeat for successive stitches. B. For Embroidering an Edge—Straight, Scalloped or Irregular. The stitches are the same as in "A" but should be placed close enough together so that the threads touch, making a firm edge. The embroidery should be done before the edge is cut. It can then be finished in various ways. The narrow edge can be turned back and whipped down on the wrong side, or blanket stitched just over the edge with fine cotton thread. Kensington Outline Stitch. —This stitch is used to follow the line of a design for ornamentation. To avoid the knot, when starting begin half an inch from the end of the line to be followed, and put in three or four running stitches, bringing the thread out at the proper place for starting. Turn the cloth around, holding it over the left forefinger, and work from you. Pointing the needle toward you, take a short running stitch directly on the line keeping the thread always on the right side of the needle, except on a line curving sharply to the left when the thread will fall more naturally to the left side. The thread being carried from one stitch to another gives the effect of a long diagonal stitch on the right side and running stitches on the wrong. The length of the stitch will be determined by the size of the thread, and the character of the line to be covered, a curved line requiring a shorter stitch than a straight one.

What changed for this modern edition

• This is a historical guided design exercise, not a fixed historical doily chart. The source reproduces eleven student designs and asks the maker to create, compare, and choose an outline.
• The source dimensions are a 9-inch cloth and 8-inch practice papers. Modern transfer methods are practical additions; test any marking method on a scrap first.
• The steps combine the doily exercise with the referenced blanket and Kensington stitch instructions from the same book. The modern guide has not been physically sample-stitched.