Simple to work, beautiful results.  As in laid work, these stitches can be used for large design areas not suitable for satin stitch.  The results create rich texture and interesting patterns, depending upon how you employ them. You can also use them effectively in medium-sized and small motifs as well as bands and borders. 

     General Directions:    You will need to use a hoop or frame to maintain constant tension.   The stitches show off to full advantage when used with medium to heavy-weight threads. Pearl cotton 5 or 8 or Kanagawa silk are excellent choices. Three strands of floss also show them off to advantage. For fine work, one strand of floss or a fine twisted silk works as well.  Any ground is suitable, although regionally, certain grounds were employed.

     Use longer lengths of thread than you would ordinarily employ, otherwise you will constantly have to begin and end threads.

The stitch is worked right to left. Left-handed embroiderers will reverse this procedure.

Bring needle out at the bottom of the line of stitching (red arrow).

With the thread kept to the left, the needle goes straight up and then down at 2 (the top of the motif) and comes back out at 3.

Make a 90-degree tie-down stitch at the center. It should be snug, but not overly so.

Come back up at the bottom for the next long stitch.

According to Linn Skinner of Skinner Sisters Designs, this stitch was used in very early samplers along with rice stitch.

It can also be used to fill areas that require a central line, such as leaves. Also, the long stitches can be curved slightly (reference Mary Thomas's "Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches") to use in objects such as leaves - or borders.

According to some, the difference between Roman stitch and Romanian stitch is the angle of the couching stitch.  Some feel with Roman stitch, the tie-down stitch is exactly perpendicular at the center. Any other angle puts it in the Romanian stitch category.  However, from all examples I have found, the difference is the length of the couching stitch.  Later in this article, I discuss why I feel this is a good boundary line for the two stitches.

The following graphics show the workings. The illustrations don't show off the center couched stitch to advantage.

The example at left (from Pamela Clabburn's encyclopedia) is a different example of Bokhara couching. The couching threads form a diagonal pattern along the long lengths of laid threads.

According to Clabburn, Bokhara (also spelled Bukhara) is a city in Uzbekistan (north of Afghanistan) which has always been known for its embroideries. She notes, "the designs have a great similarity to Iranian (Persian) ones and are often of formalized flowers, singly or in bunches, worked in colored silks on linen."

Colcha Embroidery hails from New Mexico and is made of a wool ground and two strands of wool yarn.  It is a Spanish term for quilt or bedspread and also used to define embroidered hangings and covers made by the Spanish colonial settlers in New Mexico.

Clabburn considers it in a category of Rumanian couching. I disagree because of the short, perpendicular couching stitches used and the resultant pattern of the couching stitches (see Ballentine example).