This is a pretty typical example of Richelieu embroidery which is essentially white cutwork.  T

This is a pretty typical example of Richelieu embroidery which is essentially white cutwork.  This example is from a gallery.ru site.  It’s not terribly difficult.  You copy a pattern onto tissue paper, attach it to white linen, then do a running stitch to outline the pattern.  Remove the tissue paper, buttonhole stitch over all that outline you created with running stitch and cut out the linen in the spaces indicated by the original pattern.  Not a bad effect though, I might give it a try on a small sample some time in the near future.