Remy's Vigil Book - The Embroidering Part 1

After finishing the design of the goldwork cover, it was time to start with couching down the lines. The lines were couched using #368 matte gold wyre from Thistle Threads and #5 silver passing thread from Hedgehog Handworks (now out of business). I happened to have both of these threads already, and chose them based on size and quantity, and the fact that I had bullion that matched their color. They were slightly different to work with. The silver was slightly thicker and acted more like metal wire would.

Sometimes I don't take the best pictures of my work, but hopefully you get the idea here.

The lines were somewhat complex to work with. In the original piece, there are two threads that are paired, but often have split apart to go create sub designs, to return to each other. Often they cross over themselves. In order to get all of that straight I printed out a very high resolution corner of the design, and drew arrows on it to follow. Even with one corner blown up to a full 8x11 page there were some more densely crossing areas that ended up being mostly guesswork.

Gold passing thread so close to completed

Because the lines were so complex I wasn't able to actual couch down both threads at once, when they were next to each other. I didn't have two spools of the thread, and couldn't begin to guess how long a second piece would need to be. Instead when separated thread returned to each other I tried to couch the second in the same places as the first, often going over both threads to give the illusion that they were couched at the same time.

Once I had completed all the gold portions - which amounted to four large motifs in the corners, and two smaller ones on each long side - I moved onto the silver. There was much less passing thread to worry about this time, and none of the motifs were particularly complicated. The flower petals were a bit of a pain due to the small loops crossing over each other and generally not wanting to go where I told them to, but it was still nothing compared to the gold motifs.

After the silver was done I outlined the last few objects with sewing thread, just so that I could find them once the paper was removed. This included the eagle, the central shield, and hilts of the swords. All of these were going to be more complicated that just outlined in passing thread, so couldn't be done over the paper.

All the passing thread