Chinese Silk Forbidden Stitch Embroidery, Qing Dynasty c. 1900

A silk embroidery of peonies and bats in shades of blue on a soft duck egg silk, surrounded by a silk brocade in blues and browns. Th embroidery is a mixture of satin stitch and seed stitch or “forbidden stitch”.

The forbidden stitch is said to have been so called because its minute working strained the eyes too much, but it is more likely to have been named after the Forbidden City. The stitch is made by making a coil of thread, winding the thread around an embroidery needle three or four times, then pushing it through the middle of the coil.