ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the strange accidents in the history of education, embroidery—which is decorative needlework—has become separated from that needlework which is its basis. The making of garments included their decoration by a delicate and painstaking type of embroidery, such as drawn thread work, broderie Anglaise, or lace insertion and pin-tucks. This concentration on the structure of the material is obviously an essential of constructional needlework and it can be brought home to students by a short course in weaving, not with the aim of turning out weavers or even of turning out cloths, but simply to make and study the extreme cases of structural effect and to develop a sense of texture. The sense of pattern can be developed along with the sensuous appreciation of the materials of needlework, by building up centre patterns like those discussed in rick-rack or Russian braid, narrow ribbon, thread, lace, beads.
