"Stitching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my good scoundrel, pass on, I honour thee: [Exeunt Lictors.] But that I hate to have action with such base rogues as these, you should have seen me unrip their noses now, and have sent them to the next barber's to stitching; for do you see—-I am a man of humour, and I do love the varlets, the honest varlets, they have wit and valour, and are indeed good profitable,—errant rogues, as any live in an empire. Dost thou hear, poetaster? ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... reconcile the Small People with that poor sister of yours who had left them, twenty years before, and wanted them so sorely? The hospital doctor gave her complaint a long name, and I gather that it has a place by itself in books of pathology. But the woman's tale was that, after she had been stitching through the long night, the dawn came through the roof and found her with four marguerites still left to be embroidered in gold on the pieces of satin that lay in her lap. She threaded her needle afresh, rubbed her weary eyes, ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... better than the stitching, and best of all she liked to be sent with Maitre Isaac to some cottage where solace for soul and body were needed, and the inmate was too ill to be brought to Madame la Duchess. She was learning much and improving too ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... done for me which my mother and sister did for themselves. For this my father praised me, and my mother tried to scold me, and couldn't. But now it was all so different! Instead of toiling at plain stitching and hemming and sewing, I seemed to be working a bit of lovely tapestry all the time,—so many thoughts and so many pictures went weaving themselves into the work; while every little bit finished appeared so much of the labor of the universe actually done,—accomplished, ended: for ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Winifred had taken still stronger interest. This was a diminutive imitation of the deceased, in the person of his hump-backed son, a little man of about twenty-four, who might, as far as appearance went, have been any age from twenty to eighty, with a pale anxious face like his mother's. He was stitching at a coat with, apparently, the same pair of scissors by his side that used to delight us two children. Standing by the side of the board, and looking on with a skilled intelligence shining from her pale eyes, was Mrs. Shales, with an infant in her arms—a wasted little grandchild wrapt ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... her stitching. He offered a comment now, perhaps, to change the subject. It is embarrassing for a modest man to ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... outside, though, she could not resist one more sly peep in, just to make sure she had not been dreaming. So down went her eye to the finger-hole again, but all she saw was the kitchen, with its sanded floor and bright turf fire, the key-beam with the nets hanging across it, and Betty stitching away as fast ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... perspiration about the head, or by some other exposure such as might result from cold, influenza or attack of rheumatism. There may be aching pains and a feeling of heavy weight in the forehead; tearing, stitching pains above the eyes, in the cheek bones; sometimes the skull feels as if it would fall to pieces. In the rheumatic variety the scalp is sore and tender, tearing throbbing pains or hard aching pains. There is some fever, dry skin, the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... tell in the most incidental way of something that had happened during the day, and then, in his sliding, slipping, repetitious, back-stitching fashion, would move round from one indifferent topic to another until he managed at last to ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... on a flat bed, the paper being fed into the press in flat sheets, and how some of the big presses print from curved plates that fit around a big roller, the paper running into the press continuously from an immense big roll as wide as the press. He told about the wonderful folding and stitching machines, and many ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... courses. At its head, Mrs. Miriam Sopinsky, dim with years and the kind of weariness of the flesh that Rembrandt knew so well, her face even yellower beneath the black wig with the bold row of machine-stitching down its center, the hands veiny and often ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... hope, seized the knife and ran its sharp point around the stitching of the soles. Between the double leather of one lay ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... carrying out this decision, and in a few minutes mother and son were locked in the boy's room, and busy stitching the precious pieces of bunting into one of the quilts. It never occurred to them to ask what they would do or how they would feel if some half-clad, shivering rebel should find his way into the room and walk off with that quilt without so much ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... first were that he was like to have no wife, or she should have amended a corner of his rare slashed sleeve, that was ravelling forth o' the stitching," saith she. "And the second were, that he were like the folk in this vicinage, with his golden hair and grey eyen. And the third, that he were not, for that his speech was not of these parts. And the fourth, that his satin slashed sleeves and his silver buckles of his shoes must have ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... within, burst denoting the greater violence; as, to burst a gun; to rupture a blood-vessel; a steam-boiler may be ruptured when its substance is made to divide by internal pressure without explosion. To rip, as usually applied to garments or other articles made by sewing or stitching, is to divide along the line of a seam by cutting or breaking the stitches; the other senses bear some resemblance or analogy to this; as, to rip open a wound. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... chary of candles. We had many devices to use as few as possible. In the winter afternoons she would sit knitting for two or three hours—she could do this in the dark, or by firelight—and when I asked if I might not ring for candles to finish stitching my wristbands, she told me to "keep blind man's holiday." They were usually brought in with tea; but we only burnt one at a time. As we lived in constant preparation for a friend who might come in any evening (but who never did), it required some contrivance to keep our ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... to designed learning. We learn arts and professions by apprenticeships, that is, much after the fashion we learned walking, or stitching, or fire-making, or love-making at home—by example, precept, and practice combined. Apprentices at anything, from ditching, basket-work, or watch-making, to merchant-trading, legislation, or surgery, submit either to a nominal or an ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... Betty, stitching away, 'has given me a commission concerning you. She desires me to see to it that ennui does not creep upon you during your vacation in this unexciting place. How do I know but it is creeping upon you already? and you give me no chance to ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... perspective? Here is the outer side: a humble home, a narrow circle, tending the baby, patching, sewing, cooking, calling; or, measuring dry goods, chopping a typewriter, checking up a ledger, feeding the swift machinery, endless stitching, gripping a locomotive lever, pushing the plow, tending the stock, doing the chores, tiresome examination papers; and all the rest of the endless, endless, doing, day by day, of the commonplace treadmill things, that must be done, that fill out the day of the great majority of human lives. ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... nearly off with making, for the last day or two, innumerable rolls of coarse little baby clothes, layettes for the use of small new-born slaves; M—— diligently cutting and shaping, and I as diligently stitching. We leave a good supply for the hospitals, and for the individual clients besides who have besieged me ever since my ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... wrought out the scheme of a wooden cannon; which France shall exclusively profit by, in the first instance. It is to be made of staves, by the coopers;—of almost boundless calibre, but uncertain as to strength! Thus they: hammering, scheming, stitching, founding, with all their heart and with all their soul. Two bells only are to remain in each Parish,—for tocsin and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... opened in the Hawkins' drawing-room—or what remained of it. Our family physician was diligently winding a bandage around my right ankle. An important-looking youth in the uniform of an ambulance surgeon was stitching up a portion of my left forearm ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... sat down to some needlework, stitching away busily, and giving me all sorts of information about her family—how she had two boys out at work at Bandy's, taking it for granted that I knew who Bandy's were; that she had her eldest girl in service, ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... She has tried to get work to do at home. But all the sewing machine work she can obtain is so heavy. And so poorly paid! What do you suppose she gets for stitching those great, heavy motorman's coats—putting them all together except making buttonholes and sewing on buttons, which is ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... he came, for the "Cape of Good Cheer" did not owe its prosperity, as its name might suggest, to any Providence of our theology. But most of the brightness abode in the Chinamen's shoe shops, where many lamps shone on the hammering and the stitching. There were endless shoe shops, and they all belonged to Powson or Singson or Samson, while one sign-board bore the broad impertinence "Macpherson." The proprietors stood in the door, the smell came out in ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... Dolores, "for she is a perfect victim to other people's bad work, and spends the evening in stitching up and making presentable the wretched garments ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... contamination of old native analogies, or crude manufacture on the part of some narrator. It may be remarked, however, that the life-restoring book is analogous to the magic book in "Vetalapancavincati," No. 2, while the repairing of the shattered ship by means of the magic stones suggests the stitching-together of the planks in Grimm, No. 129. The setting appears to ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... but when Sophia had resumed her own clothes, and it was ascertained beyond doubt that the new dress had not suffered, and Constance herself was calmly stitching again, she said, poising her needle as she had poised it to ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... had for several years "closed" shoes—which, my readers who do not live in "shoe towns" may not know, means sewing or stitching them. To this business she applied herself with renewed energy. There was a large hotel in Riverdale Centre, where several families from Boston spent the summer. By the aid of Squire Lee, she obtained the washing of these families, which was ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... Snippings and Miss Nippins were sewing there day and night; that a sewing-machine was busily rattling in mamma's room; and that there were all sorts of pinking and quilling, and braiding and hemming, and whipping and ruffling, and over-sewing and cat-stitching and hem-stitching, and other female ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... know anything else," said Gertrude to herself. "She enjoys reading and learning as well as I do, and makes a far better use of the chance she has: and yet she lives on from day to day, wearying herself with little Claude, and stitching away, as though she cared for nothing beyond. Wouldn't she enjoy being rich, and sending things to her family! Why, the delight she had over that common grey plaid that she sent to her aunt was quite absurd—and quite ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... was not the work of one thunderbolt she had to see. Now, under the darting questions of the court-examiner, she was like a frightened girl lost in the woods and groping through a tempest, with lightning thrusts pursuing her on every side, stitching the woods with fire like the needle in a sewing-machine stabbing and ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... admiration and gratitude, the coats and garments, the lint and bandages, which you have made. Tender hearts, if you could have finished the war with your needles, it would have been finished long ago; but stitching does not crush rebellion, does not annihilate treason, or hew traitors in pieces before the Lord. Excellent as far as it goes, it stops fearfully short of the goal. This ought ye to do, but there are other things which you ought not to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... silence after this. Theo had gone back to her work with a sigh, and Miss Pamela was stitching industriously. She was never idle, and always taciturn, and on this occasion her mind was fully occupied. She was thinking of Lady ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Alexandra went on stitching. "Yes. It was one of the first things he bought for the old log house. It was a great extravagance in those days. But he wrote a great many letters back to the old country. He had many friends there, and they wrote to ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... the wide veranda Mrs. Lee sat making buttonholes in a blouse for Billy, humming as she worked. Occasionally she patted the crisp cloth in her hand as though she loved this task of stitching for her youngsters. About her quiet reigned; broken now and then by Peggy's bird in its cage and the far-off sound of the gasoline mower on ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... results of vital effort and spontaneous renewal. Above all he must not alarm the patient. The First Consul is far from doing this; on the contrary his expressions are all encouraging. Let the patient keep quiet, there shall be no re-stitching, the wound shall not be touched. The constitution solemnly declares that the French people shall never allow the return of the emigres,[3117] and, on this point, the hands of future legislators are already tied fast; it prohibits any exception being added to the old ones.—But, first, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Stitching with ceaseless labor To earn her pitiful bread; Begging a crust of a neighbor, And getting ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... stitching! It must never stop; for all she got for making a whole shirt was ten cents, and with her utmost efforts she could only finish ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... don't need him," declared Adam, as he walked away. He went back to his saddler shop, where he sat all day stitching. He had ample time to think of Henry ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... faithful servant's careful hand. Endless had been the thought expended before cutting into each piece of the precious material; endless the labour lavished upon the fine embroideries by Hilda herself, upon the minute stitching by her brave-hearted mother. But the work had progressed well, and the finished garments that lay amidst bundles of sweet-smelling dried herbs in the great old press would have done credit to the spinning ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... there is nothing about this habit to distinguish it from any trim golf suit, with the stitching up the left front which is now so popular. When on the horse, it looks, as some one phrased it, as though one were riding side saddle on both sides. This is accomplished by having the fronts of the skirt double, ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... the right lung particularly affected. She cannot lie upon the right side on account of sharp, stitching pains through the lung. Sometimes the sharp pains extend through the left lung, with violent palpitation ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... must but yield, When like Pallas you advance, With a thimble for your shield, And a needle for your lance; Fairest of the stitching train, Ease my passion by your art, And in pity to my pain, Mend the hole that's in ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Mr Merdle would have considered well attained, though Mr Sparkler had been a more expensive article. And he did not get Mr Sparkler by any means cheap for Society, even as it was. There was a dinner giving in the Harley Street establishment, while Little Dorrit was stitching at her father's new shirts by his side that night; and there were magnates from the Court and magnates from the City, magnates from the Commons and magnates from the Lords, magnates from the bench and magnates from the bar, Bishop magnates, Treasury ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... group all stitching away at the big new sail; Omar, the Reis, two or three volunteers, some old sailors of mine, and little Darfour. If I die I think you must have that tiny nigger over; he is such a merry little soul, I ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... wanted to see you to ask you to join my society, the 'Daughters of Duty,'" she went on, her eyes on a piece of fine white damask she was hem-stitching. "Its object is to preserve our old landmarks, and when I spoke to your father he told me he was quite sure you would care to ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... The fairy stitching gleams On the sides, and in the seams, And reveals That the Pixies were the wags Who tipped these funny tags, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... with Sally. When the old times could not be recaptured, May sneered in self-defence. The two girls did not chatter over their work now when they were left alone. They became hostile, each aggrieved, and both mutually contemptuous. Sally kept to her stitching, and glowered. May thought to herself. Sally abruptly announced the soppiness of May's continued exploits. When asked by her mother if she were not going out with May, Sally returned the cold answer that May was soft, and continued to walk alone, ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... of the room, was the handiwork of Fritz Kohler. He had learned his trade under an old-fashioned tailor in Magdeburg who required from each of his apprentices a thesis: that is, before they left his shop, each apprentice had to copy in cloth some well known German painting, stitching bits of colored stuff together on a linen background; a kind of mosaic. The pupil was allowed to select his subject, and Fritz Kohler had chosen a popular painting of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. The gloomy Emperor and his staff were represented as crossing a stone bridge, and behind ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... in a stupor, kept her fingers clinched upon the handle of the bag; and without using violence he could not move them. Then the stitching of the frail gave way, and Sir Duncan espied a roll of parchment. Suddenly the lady opened large dark eyes, which wandered a little, and then (as he raised her head) ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... gathered from my pupil and my own observation; but no sooner was I initiated, than she made me useful in twenty different ways: all the tedious parts of her work were shifted on to my shoulders; such as stretching the frames, stitching in the canvas, sorting the wools and silks, putting in the grounds, counting the stitches, rectifying mistakes, and finishing the pieces she was ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... linen, remove thread from the machine and run the goods through the hemmer as though stitching; you will find ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... housemaid!" She looked from the kitchen,— Neat was the kitchen and tidy was she; There at her window a sempstress sat stitching; "Were I a sempstress, how ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... grades cannot be considered as furnishing any important contribution in the training of those who will make their living in the sewing trades. Much the same must be said of the work in the technical high schools. It is taught not for the purpose of securing quick, accurate hand or machine stitching, but to enable the girls to make a few garments for their personal use. Due to the fact that very few of the girls who become wage earners in these trades remain in school after the completion of the elementary course it is doubtful whether the ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... over his eyes as he spoke, put his feet on Perine's stool, and his elbow on the table. Marie moved quietly about, set the saucepan again on the stove, and taking some needlework from a box, sat down near her husband, stitching rapidly. Every now and then she glanced at him, and her mind was tenderly busy over his concerns all the while, so that tears would have stood in her eyes if they had not had other work ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... old enough to say thank you to you either," said Hector, who, all this time, had been losing no moment from his work, but was stitching away, with a bore, and a twiddle, and a hiss, at the sole of a ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... finishing. She had almost done with even this; most people liked young help; brisker with their needles, sewing without glasses, nicer and fresher looking to have about. Poor "Aunt Blin" overheard one man ask his wife in her dressing-room before dinner, "Why, if she must have a stitching-woman in the house, she couldn't find a more comfortable one to look at; somebody a little bright and cheerful to bring to the table, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and icy scowling scan, Of rigid, total abstinence man. Gone is its fair renown of yore, It's schoolboy battles all are o'er, Which made it then a "Campo Bello" For many an embryo daring fellow— Too young to know what men of sense Have called the art of self-defence; There buttons flew, from stitching riven, Black eyes and bloody noses given— Even conflicts national took place, Among old Bytown's youthful race. Why not? for children bigger grown I rave sometimes down the gauntlet thrown For cause as small, and launch'd afar The fierce and ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... upward curve towards each end. Laths were introduced from stem to stern instead of planks—they were provided with a gunwhale or edging which, though slight, added strength to the fabric—the whole was covered on the outside with deer skins sewed together and fastened by stitching the ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad
... a stitching shop in a shed against Tom Fletcher's house," he said. "There were none of my kin left in the wide world but Minnie, and, if I wasn't a burden, I wanted to live near her. They brought me saddles and harness to sew, and I ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... the machine's pedal set the needle to stitching like mad. A second touch in the opposite direction brought it to an abrupt standstill. For the five hours of my first afternoon session there was not an instant's harmony between what I did and what I intended to do. I sewed frantically into ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... caution, for I was on the point of giving way, and throwing myself weakly upon her neck. We went on; she whistling and stitching, I making semblance to sew. And it was well we did so; for almost directly he came back for his whip, which he had laid down and forgotten; and again I felt one of those sharp, quick-scanning glances, sent all round the room, and ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... entitled The Jolly Goshawk. The epithet Gay has the sanction of Scott and Jamieson. Buchan gives a rendering of this ballad under title of The Scottish Squire. Whin, furze. Bigly, spacious. Sark, shroud. Claith, cloth. Steeking, stitching. Gar'd, made. ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... rate," said Mrs. Twitchel, "our minister's wife will be a pattern; I don't know anybody that goes beyond her either in spinning or fine stitching." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... could not last. My only wonder is, that I continued to get whole months of undiscovered study. One morning, about four o'clock, as might have been expected, my mother heard me stirring, came in, and found me sitting crosslegged on my bed, stitching away, indeed, with all my might, but with a ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... drinking Russian tea," said Concha, stitching quietly but flashing him a glance of amusement, not ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... and she meant to let him down gently. She'd have done it, too, if he'd met her in the ordinary way: but when, after searching the house, she looked into the little back workshop and spied him seated on the bench there, cross-legged and solemn as an idol, stitching away at a waistcoat, she couldn't hold ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... show me a kindness by coming again. I am so glad to have a guest," said Avdyeeich. Stepanuich departed, and Martin poured out the last drop of tea, drank it, washed up, and again sat down by the window to work—he had some back-stitching to do. He stitched and stitched, and now and then cast glances at the window—he was looking for Christ, and could think of nothing but Him and His works. And the divers sayings of Christ were in his head all ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... is wide and the length that is short and the gloves that have stitching and the slippers that are where there is that position, all this and there is curling when the hearing is in the earring, all this and the outlining which is ermine, all this and the buckles showing, all this is that intention and some expectation. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... found that the men with whom he dealt were fools enough to be attracted by a high price, shall be left to advanced moralists to decide. In that universal agreement with diverse opinions there must, we fear, have been something of dishonesty. But he made the best of breeches, put no shoddy or cheap stitching into them, and was, upon the ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... was a pair of stays. They were a long time in hand, for the fitting them was a most difficult job; but when finished, they were such curiosities of needlework, that Susan's neat mother herself used to show off the stitching and the eyelet-holes to every friend ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... than to arrange laces and ribbons and flowers. She could easily learn to make and trim a bonnet, she thought; at least, she could try. At first it would come hard to sit cooped up in those little back shops, sewing and stitching from morning till night; but it was better than marrying Elam Hunt, or than eating other people's bread. Then she began to build castles in the air, as her custom was. She fancied herself a milliner's apprentice, working ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... examined for a moment the stitching on the back of one of his gloves. Then, without looking up, "We don't offer you money," he said. "That we ...
— The American • Henry James
... and following her into the room found Miss Kybird busy stitching in the midst of a bewildering assortment of brown paper patterns and pieces of cloth. Mrs. Kybird gave him a chair, and, having overheard a portion of his conversation with her husband, made one or two ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... fun," she thought; "and my, but running a sewing-machine does give one an appetite! I could eat two trays-full, I verily believe. Thank goodness, I've no more stitching ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... master-workman, with three or four apprentices under him; and all day long there was to be heard in his shop the cheerful, business-like sound of the thumping of short hammers on lap-stones, together with the loud clicking of the sewing-machine on which the delicate stitching of uppers was done. In the window, screened with a green curtain of growing vines—as is the pretty custom with most of the German shoemakers on the East Side—there always might be seen a pair or two of well-made stout shoes drying ...
— An Idyl Of The East Side - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... to preserve them, as thinking I should have no occasion to use them any more, when I came to overlook them I found them almost all rotten, except two; and with these I went to work, and after a great deal of pains and aukward tedious stitching for want of needles, at length I finished a three-cornered ugly thing, like those which our long boats use, and which I very well knew how to manage, especially since it was like that which I had in my ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... dream of Whitey's life, the pinnacle of his ambition, the idea of the tip-top of ecstatic happiness that lived in his brain was—Boots. And now he had them. And they were beauties; with tops of soft leather with fancy stitching, inlaid with white enameled leather, and high heels, that a fellow could dig into the ground when he was roping a horse. In short, they were regular boots, that any one might be proud of. And they had been made to ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... in, dear child! I like to have you." The mother's help paused in her rapid stitching to look up with a smile at the pretty, brown-haired child. "Come close to the light!" she said. "I hope it isn't a very long ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... of life still shoot and I play amid this snowy desolation. Fox-tracks are far less numerous than in the fields; but those of hares, skunks, partridges, squirrels, and mice abound. The mice tracks are very pretty, and look like a sort of fantastic stitching on the coverlid of the snow. One is curious to know what brings these tiny creatures from their retreats; they do not seem to be in quest of food, but rather to be traveling about for pleasure or sociability, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... themselves in the still water. To reach it Winsome led Ralph among the scented gall-bushes and bog myrtle, where in the marshy meadows the lonely grass of Parnassus was growing. Pure white petals, veined green, with spikelets of green set in the angles within, five-lobed broidery of daintiest gold stitching, it shone with so clear a presage of hope that Ralph stooped to pick it that he might give it ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... when dusk droops o'er The tailor's old stone-lintelled door. There sits he stitching half asleep, Beside his smoky tallow dip. "Click, click," his needle hastes, and shrill Cries back the cricket beneath the sill. Sometimes he stays, and over his thread Leans sidelong his old tousled head; Or stoops to peer with ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... the perusal of his paper, too disturbed to read; the young vagrant's words kept sounding in his ears. He raised his eyes. The plump hand of the lady with the Roman nose still rested on her lap; it had been recased in its black glove with large white stitching. Her frowning gaze was fixed on him suspiciously, as if he had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that I should ever have this kind of use for them, I did not doubt but they were all rotten, and, indeed, most of them were so. However, I found two pieces, which appeared pretty good, and with these I went to work; and with a great deal of pains, and awkward stitching, you may be sure, for want of needles, I, at length, made a three-cornered ugly thing, like what we call in England a shoulder of mutton sail, to go with a boom at bottom, and a little short sprit at the top, such as usually our ships' ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... a small stream into the lake adjoining, the out-look, who was swinging in a hammock hung between the tops of the two masts, sang out, "Prince ahead!" Instantly all was activity on board the vessel. Story books were tucked under coils of rope, hem-stitching and embroidery were laid aside, and every ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... neatly finished. Ellen had been busy too on her own account. Alice had got a piece of fine linen for her from Miss Sophia; the collar for Mr. Van Brunt had been cut out, and Ellen with great pleasure had made it. The stitching, the strings, and the very button-holes, after infinite pains, were all finished by Thursday night. She had also made a needle-case for Alice, not of so much pretension as the other one; this was green morocco lined with crimson satin; no leaves, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... not have read, had they wanted to ever so much; in early youth their primers had been sadly neglected. Still, they had other pursuits; some were experts at the needle, and employed their time in making elaborate shirts, stitching picturesque eagles, and anchors, and all the stars of the federated states in the collars thereof; so that when they at last completed and put on these shirts, they may be said to have ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Arcis-sur-Aube, like many another, is now deserted by all who can get to livelier and more bustling centres. Tanneries, vest, stocking and glove weaving and stitching, are the only resources ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... can hear him crowing from our dove-cote. The One he is whose song is more an ornament to the landscape than the white hamlet to the hill! The One he is whose cry pierces the blue horizon like a gold-threaded needle stitching the hill-tops to the sky! The Cock he is! When you would praise him, call ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... expectation about the anticipated election. The ladies were making up bows of ribbon for their partizans, and Fanny had been so employed all the morning alone in the drawing-room; her pretty fingers pinching, and pressing, and stitching the silken favours, while now and then her hand wandered to a wicker-basket which lay beside her, to draw forth a scissors or a needlecase. As she worked, a shade of thought crossed her sweet face, like a passing cloud across the sun; the pretty ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... every gather. It makes beautiful sewing, to be sure; but when a woman has a family of little children and a small income, if all her sewing is to be kept up in this perfect style, she wears her life out in stitching. Had she not better slight a little, and get ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Ogden shut up with Mr. Richards, the servants quietly busy, and Danton Hall as still as a church on a week-day. Grace, humming a little tune, took her sewing into the dining-room, where she liked best to sit, and began stitching away industriously. The ticking of a clock on the mantel making its way to twelve, the rattling of the stripped trees in the fresh morning wind, were, for a time, the only sounds outdoor or in. Then wheels rattled ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... service-revolvers, remained rather closely grouped, with the Arabs flanking and following them. At their head rode old Bara Miyan with the Master, who well bestrode his saddle with burnished metal peaks and stitching of silver thread. After them came the three imams, Major Bohannan, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... live. How might she best avoid the misfortune of poverty for the twenty, thirty, or forty years which might be accorded to her? What did it matter whom or what she hated? The housemaid probably did not like cleaning grates; nor the butcher killing sheep; nor the sempstress stitching silks. She must live. And if she could only get away from her mother that in itself would be something. Most people were distasteful to her, but no one so much as her mother. Here in England she knew that she was despised among ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... roll their twin drums exactly at the same time and the twin trumpets peal out twin notes. After the band marched the double Ki-Ki and the double Ki, their four bodies side by side in a straight line. The Ki-Ki had left their musical instruments in the palace, and now wore yellow gloves with green stitching down the backs and swung gold-headed canes jauntily as they walked. The Ki stooped their aged shoulders and shuffled along with their hands in their pockets, and only once did they speak, and that was ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... fashionable in her attire; her neat brown cashmere dress had been made by Aunt Raby. The hemming, the stitching, the gathering, the frilling which went to make up this useful garment were neat, were even exquisite; but then, Aunt Raby was not gifted with a stylish cut. Prissie's hair was smoothly parted, but the thick plait on the back of the neck was by ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... of the lull to slip away to the harness-room on the plea of mending a rip in the stitching of his chaps. Pulling a box over by the window where he could see anyone approaching, he produced pencil and paper and proceeded to write out a rather voluminous document, which he afterward read over ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... it," remarked Amos Parr, who was squatted on the deck busily engaged in constructing a rope mat, while several of the men sat round him engaged in mending sails, or stitching canvas slippers, etc.—"not a bit of it, Grim; Dumps is too honest by half to do sich a thing. 'Twas Poker as did it, I can see by the roll of his eye below the skin. The blackguard's ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... her countenance had more intelligence than generally belongs to either age, while her figure was slight and small, small enough for a child not numbering more than three years: she, too, was employed—stitching, with a long awkward needle, something which looked very like the sail of a baby-boat. A boy, somewhat older than herself, was twisting tow into cordage, while the eldest, the man of the family, issued his directions, or rather his commands, to both, in the customary style of lads when overlooking ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Jost, who sat there smiling scornfully without farther words. For the first time in his life, Blasi left his glass unfinished. He pulled his cap down over his eyes and left the inn. When he entered the widow's cottage, Veronica sat by the table, stitching away at the old mail-bag. She put it down as he came in, and looked up anxiously ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... was found a quantity of blue cloth, part of which seemed to have been a heavy overcoat, and a part probably wrapped around the body. There was also a large quantity of canvas in and around the grave, with coarse stitching through it and the cloth, as though the body had been incased as if for burial at sea. Several gilt buttons were found among the rotting cloth and mould in the bottom of the grave, and a lens, apparently the object-glass of ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... wonder was that one or the other of them never got burned; his grandmother, whose eyes no longer permitted her to read at night, knitting busily in her arm-chair, or nodding over her needles; Aunt Sarah, reading in the book that always lay at hand for leisure moments; Aunt Martha, stitching away, perhaps on some of his own torn garments; his mother writing home to Mr. Lloyd, or to Mary; while from the kitchen, outside, came the subdued sound of the servants' voices, as they chattered over their tasks. Bert thought it a lovely way to go ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... inclined to think that the old gentleman is mistaken in the substitution of a "Bounding Rock" for a "Ryan Dead Ball" in that game, although I do remember that the stitching was different from anything that we had ever seen before, and it may be that we were fooled as he has stated. If so the trick was certainly ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... his terrible injury with an antiseptic lotion, prior to the more difficult and delicate task of searching for and securing the ends of the severed artery, which had been spouting blood like a fountain until Dick had applied the tourniquet. The entire operation of dressing, stitching, and binding up the wound occupied the best part of half an hour, by which time the roadway was packed with people anxiously enquiring what was amiss, and eager to get a glimpse of the benevolent young barbarians who had ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... myriad transparent, furious wings weave a tissue throbbing with sound. And this for some moments will quiver right over the hive, with prodigious rustle of gossamer silks that countless electrified hands might be ceaselessly rending and stitching; it floats undulating, it trembles and flutters like a veil of gladness invisible fingers support in the sky, and wave to and fro, from the flowers to the blue, expecting sublime advent or departure. And at last one angle declines ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... diplomacy has been, for the last six hundred years, incessantly occupied in stitching together bits of material, without ever having been able to make a coat. It does not consider either the colour or the quality of the cloth, but always keeps the needle going. The thread it uses is often white, and it not infrequently ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... where a blue tree overshadows a shell-fish, and a gigantic butterfly seems ready to swallow up Palemon and Lavinia. The author has the merit merely of cutting out each of his figures from the piece where its inventor had placed it, and stitching them down together ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... end; and so at last the eventful Monday morning arrived,—"Black Monday," as Dulce called it, and then sighed as she looked out on the sunshine and the waving trees, and thought how delicious a long walk or a game of tennis would be, instead of stitch, stitch, stitching all day. But Dulce was an unselfish little soul, and kept all these thoughts to herself, and dressed herself quickly; for she had overslept herself, and Phillis had ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... wished that she could have a part in making it. She would have enjoyed putting her finest stitches into something to be worn by the beautiful girl who had smiled on her. It would be almost like doing it for a friend. But she was kept busy stitching monotonous ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and set my people, Mercer, W. Hewer, Tom and the girle at work at ruling and stitching my ruled book for the Muster-Masters, and I hard toward the settling of my Tangier accounts. At noon dined alone, the girl Mercer taking physique can eat nothing, and W. Hewer went forth to dinner. So up to my accounts again, and then comes Mrs. Mercer ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... cheek pressed to his, knew that she was paid in full for all her midnight sewings and the torturing hours of drowsy stitching when her head nodded with the weariness of the day's toil, while she recreated for herself filched ideas from the dainty garments that had ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... accompanied by a little boy, also might be remarked coming thither daily. It was Miss Briggs and little Rawdon, whose business it was to see to the inward renovation of Sir Pitt's house, to superintend the female band engaged in stitching the blinds and hangings, to poke and rummage in the drawers and cupboards crammed with the dirty relics and congregated trumperies of a couple of generations of Lady Crawleys, and to take inventories of the china, the glass, and other properties ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... appearance, for she had discovered that nothing pleased him so much as to see her running in and out of the house, popping in for ten minutes' chat on her return from a walk, or livening a dull afternoon by taking her work across the road, and stitching by his couch. This latter attention had also brought about the happy results of interesting the invalid in the coming sale, and more than one of Nan's efforts was bought before it was completed, thereby affording ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Aurora's morning gown. She was sewing; lining with snowy lawn innumerable pockets in a square basket that she held in her lap. The pockets were small, the needles were fine, the thread was a length of cobweb. Everything about the basket was small except the hopes that she was stitching into it; they were so great that her heart could scarcely hold them. Nature was stirring everywhere. The seeds were springing in the warm earth. The hens were clucking to their downy chicks just out of the egg. The birds were flying hither and thither in the apple ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to them with stout thread, the bars crossed and tied firmly at corners, and the whole raised on chairs or tables to a convenient height. Thus around the outstretched quilt a dozen quilters could sit running the whole together with fanciful set designs of stitching. When about a foot on either side was wholly quilted, it was rolled upon its bar, and the work went on; thus the visible quilt diminished, like Balzac's Peau de Chagrin, in a united and truly sociable work ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... would go out riding together while Lilias went shopping in the car with Cousin Clare; they practised duets, and both made crude attempts at sketching the house. Their tastes in books and fancy-work were somewhat similar, and they would sit in the shade in the afternoons stitching at ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... the dog was appealed to on many occasions by the neighbours, begging that the quarrelsome brute should either be disposed of or kept within doors. To all these solicitations and warnings the little tailor paid no heed, but continued stitching his breeches and cribbing his customers' goods, while the ugly little spaniel, without interruption, amused himself by snapping at and biting the heels ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... mistress' home became a sewing center and deifferent women in the neighborhood would come there every day to make clothes for the soldiers. On each bed was placed the vests, coats, shirts, pants, and caps. One group did all the cutting, one the stitching, and one the fitting. Many women cried while they served [TR: sewed?] heart-broken because their husbands and sons had to go to the war. One day the Yanks came to our plantation and took all of the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... hair is! I wonder if Fatimah will remember to wash it every day. She should twist it around her fingers to keep it in pretty curls. . . . Oh, why did God make my child so beautiful?. . . . Dear me, her morning frock wanted stitching at the sleeves, it's a chance if Habeebah has seen to it. Then there's her underclothing. . . . Will she be deaf and blind and dumb always? I wonder if I shall see her when I. . . . They say that angels are sent. . . . Yes, yes, that's ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Squire Baca's girls nor Edith May Jonas had better things than you," said Jane, unaware of all this. Her own garments remained things of the baldest utility, but the village seamstress was kept busy feather-stitching and beribboning articles for ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... out, but without remark he sat down with his aunt at a table on the opposite side of the hearth. Lottie perched on a chair a little back of them, so that while she saw their side faces they must turn somewhat to see her. When they did so she was quietly stitching at her fancy-work, but the rest of the time was telegraphing with her brilliant eyes all sorts of funny messages to the party opposite, so that they were in a state of perpetual giggle, not in keeping ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... her hand in Female Instinctive Function 14 and smoothed her graying Spun-Tex hair, feeling the hard stitching on the ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight
... originated with the drawing of threads in linen fabrics, then dividing the existing threads into strands, and working over them, in various fanciful designs, either with a buttonhole stitch or simply a wrapping stitch. Exactly this method is used at the present day, and is known as hem-stitching and fine-drawing. A later development suggested, apparently, cutting away of some of the threads, their place being supplied with others placed angularly or in circles. Many delightful examples of the work ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... little light, so I never was quite certain of the merit of these Works of Art as they were entitled. But, on the other side, where the Useful Work placard was put up, there was a great variety of articles, of whose unusual excellence every one might judge. Such fine sewing, and stitching, and button-holing! Such bundles of soft delicate knitted stockings and socks; and, above all, in Lady Ludlow's eyes, such hanks of the ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... collar factory she again earned $4 a week, stitching between five and six dozen collars a day. The stitch on men's collars is extremely small, almost invisible. It strained her eyes so painfully that she was obliged ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... ceased, the cobbler was stitching; when Donal ceased thinking, he went on feeling. Again and again came a little roll of the cobbler's drum, giving glory to God by doing his will: the sweetest and most acceptable music is that which rises from work a doing; ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... been heard of on earth, or known but little, have gone into the rest and peace of heaven. What a rest! What a change it was from the small room, with no fire and one window, the glass broken out, and the aching side and worn-out eyes, to the "house of many mansions!" No more stitching until twelve o'clock at night, no more thrusting of the thumb by the employer through the work to show it was not done quite right. Plenty of bread at last. Heaven for aching heads. Heaven for broken hearts. Heaven ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... her mother kept her downstairs at needlework later than usual. It was in truth a slight mark of returning favour. Madame de Sainfoy was in a better temper, and realised that it might be unwise to treat a tall girl of nineteen quite like a disobedient child. So Helene sat there stitching beside Mademoiselle Moineau, who was sometimes called upon to take a hand at cards. To-night this did not seem likely, for Urbain de la Mariniere came in after dinner, and the snuffy, sharp-faced little Cure of Lancilly was there too. Madame ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... the Windsor uniform," said the clown. "I think it mean. I sha'n't come in a fancy dress again, if stitching on a red collar ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... satin slipper, with only a small rosette with buckle on the toe. This rosette must not, however, be permitted to the large foot. It may, certainly, be worn on the place intended for the instep, when that ornamental rise in the outline of the foot is totally absent. Lines of white stitching on the boot make it look larger than it really is. The best boot for a large foot is one in which the toe-cap comes well up on the foot. Its lines are thus broken up, and the apparent length diminished. A pretty foot, on the contrary, looks better in a boot that has no toe-cap, the "upper" ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... day, when they were hard at work sewing and stitching the bridal array, in came a man in a great sailor's cloak with a pedlar's pack on his back, and asked if the Princesses wouldn't buy something fine of him for the wedding; he had so many wares and costly things, both ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... preparations for this momentous event. Countless stitches must be taken, a serious number of dollars spent, that the prettiest layette possible might await the coming mite. But Shirley, in one of her soft house dresses, head bent over her dainty stitching or laying out before him for the hundredth time the tiny articles she had collected or her friends donated, made too pretty a picture; he had not the heart to ruffle it with discussions of economy. ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... only enough for one," said Debby apologetically. "To-morrow there may be more. Besides you were never as clever with your needle as your pen. You always used to lose marks for needlework, and don't you remember how you herring-boned the tucks of those petticoats instead of feather-stitching them? Ha, ha, ha! I have often ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... true to her word, did so much reading and stitching and searching about for little things that were lost, that Granny and Nancy agreed to think her real conversion had begun through the breaking of the spectacles. For Nancy had allowed Terry to confess to having broken ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... with a wondrous power of hearing even in her sleep. And yet how was he to talk to his love unless he talked of love? He wished that the judge would help them to converse; he wished that some one else was there; he wished at last that he himself was away. Madeline sat perfectly tranquil stitching a collar. Upon her there was incumbent no duty of doing anything beyond that. But he was in a measure bound to talk. Had he dared to do so he also would have taken up a book; but that he ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... mused over the tomb of his old friend Gilchrist MacIan, and made friends with the monks, presenting the prior with gloves of martens' fur, and the superior officers with each of them a pair made from the skin of the wildcat. The cutting and stitching of these little presents served to beguile the time after sunset, while the family of the herdsman crowded around, admiring his address, and listening to the tales and songs with which the old man had skill to ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... that then the other parts of the observances connected with this feast, which are not sacrificial, nor, properly speaking, worship, should be added. There is no need to invoke the supposition of two authors, and a subsequent stitching together, in order to explain the arrangement. The unity is all the more probable because, otherwise, the first half would give the name of the feast as that of 'tabernacles,' and would not contain a word to account ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren |
