Long and short stitch lessons online

Needlenthread.com has been running a series of lessons for working a long-and-short stitch sampler in DMC floss. Why might this be of particular interest to Church Ladies? Despite the prosaic name (it's also known as needlepainting), long-and-short stitch is the basic technique used to produce, for example:

(Source)

(Source)

and, in a more modern example, parts of this:

(Source)

Have a look, and make sure to click on the source links for more pictures!