Embroidered Book Cover - The Planning

I had decided when the gloves were (mostly) done, that I should probably actually enter an A&S competition with them. The first one that I'll be able to make it to is King's and Queen's Arts and Sciences. Go big or go home, I suppose.

Of course, this year they require a "body of work" to enter. And while I have plenty of embroidery, I have only one thing that is vaguely documented. And so I needed to come up with something that I wanted to do, could document, and would work with the gloves.

Maybe I could use this as an excuse to try some actual metal thread? (says my brain which likes to overwork me) Embroidered book covers are pretty fantastic after all.

In my search I discovered a page from the West Kingdom that helped immensely. It also gave me the design I decided to work with.

 A little more poking around and I found a book called English Embroidered Bookbindings by Cyril Davenport on Gutenburg. And in that book is this book!

"There is in the British Museum a copy of Orationis Dominicæ Explicatio, per Lambertum Danæum, printed at Geneva in 1583, which belonged to Queen Elizabeth. It is bound in black velvet, measures 6¾ by 4¼ inches, and is ornamented most tastefully, each side having an arabesque border in gold cord and silver guimp, enclosing a panel with a design of white and red roses, with stems and leaves worked in gold cord and silver guimp with a trifle of coloured silk on the red roses and on the small leaves showing between the petals. On the front edge are the remains of red and gold ties. The design of this charming little book is excellent, and the colour of it when new must have been very effective. The design is the same on both sides. The back is in bad condition, and is panelled with arabesques in gold and silver cord."

Some of the details here made complete sense to me, although I have a hard time seeing the red and white silk they mentioned.
I had no idea what guimp was, but people more learned than I in Athena's Thimble suggested that it may be what we now call Torsade, and was almost certainly some kind of twisted cord that was couched through the middle.

By this point in my research I had acquired a variety of threads (although not exactly what was used in the original), some black velvet, and a book to cover.  I was prepared to dive in.