Early Efforts 



To 1800 



For thousands of years, the only means of 

 stitching two pieces of fabric together had been with a 

 common needle and a length of thread. The thread 

 might be of silk, flax, wool, sinew, or other fibrous 

 material. The needle, whether of bone, silver, bronze, 

 steel, or some other metal, was always the same in 

 design — a thin shaft with a point at one end and a 

 hole or eye for receiving the thread at the other end. 

 Simple as it was, the common needle (fig. 2) with its 

 thread-carrying eye had been an ingenious improve- 

 ment over the sharp bone, stick, or other object used 

 to pierce a hole through which a lacing then had to 

 be passed. 1 In addition to utilitarian stitching for such 

 things as the making of garments and household fur- 

 nishings, the needle was also used for decorative 

 stitching, commonly called embroidery. And it was 

 for this purpose that the needle, the seemingly perfect 

 tool that defied improvement, was first altered for 

 ease of stitching and to increase production. 



One of the forms that the needle took in the process 

 of adaptation was that of the fine steel hook. Called 

 an aguja in Spain, the hook was used in making a type 

 of lace known as panto de aguja. During the 17th 

 century after the introduction of chainstitch em- 

 broideries from India, this hook was used to produce 



chainstitch designs on a net ground. 2 The stitch and 

 the fine hook to make it were especially adaptable to 

 this work. By the 18th century the hook had been 

 reduced to needle size and inserted into a handle, and 

 was used to chainstitch-embroider woven fabrics. 3 

 In France the hook was called a crochet and was 

 sharpened to a point for easy entry into the fabric 

 (fig. 3). For stitching, the fabric was held taut on 

 a drum-shaped frame. The hooked needle pierced 

 the fabric, caught the thread from below the surface 

 and pulled a loop to the top. The needle reentered 

 the fabric a stitch-length from the first entry and 

 caught the thread again, pulling a second loop through 

 the first to which it became enchained. This method 

 of embroidery permitted for the first time the use of 

 a continuous length of thread. At this time the chain- 

 stitch was used exclusively for decorative embroidery, 

 and from the French name for drum — the shape of 

 the frame that held the fabric — the worked fabric 

 came to be called tambour embroidery. The crochet 4 



1 Charles M. Karch, Needles: Historical and Descriptive (12 

 Census U.S., vol. X, 1902), pp. 429-432. 



2 Florence Lewis May, Hispanic Lace and Lace Making (New 

 York. 1939), pp. 267-271. 



3 Diderot's V Encyclopedic ^ ou dictionnairc raisonne des sciences, des 

 arts et des metiers . . . , vol. II (1763), Plates Brodeur, plate II. 



1 The term "crochet," .is used today, became the modern 

 counterpart of the Spanish punto de aguja about the second 

 quarter of the 1 9th century. 



