Florentine embroidery: Bargello, a typical product of Tuscany
Bargello embroidery - History and Information | Techniques of Bargello embroidery
Patterns of Bargello embroidery are made up of vertical adjacent stitches, whose lenght may be fixed or vary. Only the straight stitch is used. Traditionally, it is executed in two ways: stitches of different lengths, staggered from each other by two or three holes of the canvas (called Hungarian point), or in a 4:2 step pattern, with stitches of four threads vertically staggered by two holes (Florentine stitch, alsto called Flame Stitch).
This kind of embroidery starts from the center of the canvas and is executed in stripes up and down from the starting row, from left to right or from right to left. No more counting is necessary because all other rows follow the first row.
Only the colors may vary from row to row, while all stitches are vertical. The stitches cover all the surface of the canvas, which is rigid and with its large holes works as a guide for the embroidery. In the past, these kinds of canvas were used as dusters and for that reason they could be used also to do embroidery tests.