Sometimes solid masses of silk or gold thread were laid in ordered flatness upon a material, and then sewn to it by long or short stitches at right angles.  This is known as couching, and is a very effective way of economizing material by displaying it all on the surface.  As a rule, however, the surface wears off somewhat, but it is possible to execute it so that it is as durable as embroidery which has been rendered in separate stitches.

In Sicily it was a common practice to use coral in embroideries as well as pearls.  Coral work is usually called Sicilian work, though it was also sometimes executed in Spain.

The garments worn by the Byzantines were very ornate; they were made of woven silk and covered with elaborate devices.  In the fourth century the Bishop of Amasia ridiculed the extravagant dress of his contemporaries.  “When men appear in the streets thus dressed,” he says, “the passers by look at them as at painted walls.  Their clothes are pictures, which little children point out to one another.  The saintlier sort wear likenesses of Christ, the Marriage of Galilee, and Lazarus raised from the dead.”  Allusion was made in a sermon:  “Persons who arrayed themselves like painted walls” “with beasts and flowers all over them” were denounced!

In the early Dark Ages there was some prejudice against these rich embroideries.  In the sixth century the Bishop St. Cesaire of Arles forbade his nuns to embroider robes with precious stones or painting and flowers.  King Withaf of Mercia willed to the Abbey of Croyland “my purple mantle which I wore at my Coronation, to be made into a cope, to be used by those who minister at the holy altar:  and also my golden veil, embroidered with the Siege of Troy, to be hung up in the Church on my anniversary.”  St. Asterius preached to his people, “Strive to follow in your lives the teachings of the Gospel, rather than have the miracles of Our Redeemer embroidered on your outward dress!” This prejudice, however, was not long lived, and the embroidered vestments and garments continued to hold their popularity all through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

It has been said on grave authority that “Woman is an animal that delights in the toilette,” while Petrarch, in 1366, recognized the power of fashion over its votaries.  “Who can see with patience,” he writes, “the monstrous fantastical inventions which people of our times have invented to deform rather than adorn their persons?  Who can behold without indignation their long pointed shoes, their caps with feathers, their hair twisted and hanging down like tails,... their bellies so cruelly squeezed with cords that they suffer as much pain from vanity as the martyrs suffered for religion!” And yet who shall say whether a “dress-reform” Laura would have charmed any more surely the eye of the poet?