The Savannah morning news., 1902-08-03

turers Each delicate meditation of
tint must be worked with material
dyed just that hue. When it is stated
that in the Queens tea set Mrs. Gill
christ has used fully seven distinct
shades of purple alone some idea of
the difficulties to be overcome can be
imagined. The technical obstacles were
also enormous. The socalled Ken
sington" long and short stitch was
found best adapted to the purpose, but
the effect of one stroke of the painters
brush could only be initiated by as
1nany careful stitches as that brush
contained hairs.
Surrounding all difficulties, however,
by sheer pluck, she at last considered
her work worthy of public exhibition,
and sent to the Chicago Exposition a
magnificent set of. sixty pieces, en-
broidered with a design of butterfly or
childs. which was shown by the con-
sent of Nine. Patti, for whom it was
worked, At once Mrs. Gilchrist liter
ally awoke to find herself famous. The
silk initiating the actual texture of the
flower was even better than the brush.
When it was decided to send over
case of American needlework to the re-
cent Paris Exposition, Mrs. Gilchrist
was asked to contribute a piece. She
selected an arrangement of pansies
hanging loosely over a ribbon, from a
painting by a French artist, using,
however. the natural flowers to work
from. The committee on awards
unanimously gave her the gold medal
over all other competitors for beauty
and naturalness of color and design.
The exquisite beauty of this panel at
tracted the attention of Queen Alexan-
ORA, who has all woman's fondness
for embroidery, and when Mrs. Gill
christ. who had previously vainly tried
to get some of her work accepted py
Queen Victoria, wrote with little hope
of success to Queen Alexandra's pri-
vate secretary, Lady Knolly, she was
surprised and delighted to receive
courteous acceptance from her owing
to the unusual circumstances"
Mrs. Gilchrist decided on an adapta-
ton of the design used for the Paris
Exposition worked on a tea set as her
gift to the Queen. In making the de-
signs for this set Mrs. Gilchrist first
made a careful water-color drawing
direct from nature. From this the work
ing design was outlined free-hand,
with ordinary pen and ink directly upon
the cloth. Commencing at the outer
edge of each petal every leaf was
worked towards the center. Every few
stitches the needle was refil.ed with
silk a shade darker or lighter, as the
case might be, from the skein a'tanged
n exact color gradations in front of
her. From this description it will be
seen that Mrs. Gilchrists method of
art needlework differs from that of the
painter only in a technical way. Ev-
cry little shadow on the flower is
faithfully reproduced. and there are
thousands of tiny stitches in each
pansy.
The exceeding neatness and care by
which the soft. smooth, velvety tex
ture is achieved may be best illustrat-
ed by the fact that it is very difficult
to distinguish one side from the other.
No knots or loose ends are allowed to
show.
Lately Mrs. Gilchrist has turned her
attention towards the popular bead
work and has achieved great success
in applying the same methods of nat
ural shades and colors to this branch
of embroidery which has generally
been supposed to admit of only the
most stiff and formal designs.