THE sight of these pretty peacocks makes you long to sit down and start working them, I am sure, and when worked on a square of white Hardanger canvas, they really make a most attractive little cloth or table-centre.

The cloth in the picture was about 12 inches square when hemmed, but you can make it just what size suits you best; this will, of course, greatly depend on what you want to use it for.

There is one thing, however, that you must be very careful about, and that is that your piece of material is perfectly square, and not wider one way than the other. Also be sure you allow about an extra 1½ inches all round to the size you want the cloth to be when finished, so that you can have a nice wide hem.

You must first hemstitch your cloth all round, and you learnt all about how to do this on page 30.

The peacocks are worked in cross-stitch with J. & J. Baldwin’s Beehive Shetland Wool, in a crimson shade. If you are making your cloth out of Hardanger canvas, you will be able to work the crosses very easily. When working on the Hardanger canvas, you just make your crosses over three threads of the canvas each way.

I think you will find it quite easy to count the crosses from the diagrams given, and the best way to make sure of getting the peacocks nicely even in the corners, like they are in the picture, is to count the number of open squares, from the corners of the diagrams to the commencement of the designs, and allow three threads for each square on your canvas. For instance, taking the peacock on the left of your cloth, you will need to start on the sixteenth square up from the lower hemstitched border, and one square to the right of the side border.

Remember, if you start the first cross right and work your crosses evenly, the design must come out even; all you have to do is to see that you don’t go over more than three threads of canvas for each cross.

This design would look very well on a cushion. In that case, the cushion cover could be made of serge, or of crash, or of linen. Crash is very easy to work on, and washes well. If the material is so fine that it tries your eyes to count the threads, then it is easy to tack Penelope canvas over the material, and work the cross-stitches on this, drawing the canvas threads out when the work is finished.