Embroidered Book Cover - Finished Product

The book cover was finished on Wednesday, giving me a full day of rest before I actually had to bring it to A&S champs (which I'll talk about in a separate post).

I finished the twist border, including a line of gold passing thread along the long sides, just for interest. It's hard to see, even in person, but I like it.

In the end I decided that the red on the flowers was just going to be silk. I was out of steam. I like how it came out. Embroidering directly on the velvet had its challenges - you aren't always going into the fabric where you think you are - so there were some do overs throughout. But the red really adds interest to the piece.

The came actually turning it into a book cover, which I just kind of improvised. All the planning I did at the beginning was make sure the velvet and interfacing were big enough for the final form. I essentially ended up sewing the book into its dress, and it just barely closes. The inside edges are still unfinished - I'm not sure how to finish them without adding too much bulk.  

All in all, I am very happy with how this came out. I want to try more goldwork things.

Book Cover - The Embroidering Part 5

I didn't get as much embroidery done at Birka as I may have liked, and I certainly did get any done while sick. But I still think I'll finish...just with fewer embellishments than originally planning. I need to do the veins in the big flowers, and maybe a bit of gold on the long sides of the border (and obviously that last corner) and then I will call it done.

I haven't quite decided how I want to do the flowers. The description suggests that red silk was used but I can't see it that in the pictures I have, and it also looks like purl was involved. I may end up going with straight silk, because it's easiest. But ideally I want to figure out how they were combined.

Documentation for the gloves is done, but I've barely started on the docs for this. Why is A&S Champs this weekend? Aaah.

Embroidered Book Cover - The Embroidering Part 4

The silver fill is done! Need to fill four gold flowers, add some decorations, and clean things up. I may manage to actually finish this on time!

Embroidered Book Cover - The Embroidering Part 3

I have started working with check purl. There are a number of small bits strewn around my room now that I will only ever find with my feet.
The idea of randomly putting down the bits of purl is hard for my brain to be ok with, but I think it's working out.
Hard to take a good picture of, though.

I decided it was worth showing what the size of this piece is. That's a normal sized thimble.

Embroidered Book Cover - The Embroidering Part 2

After I finished removing the paper from the book cover, I found a sad thing.

How did that even happen?

I replaced the whole curve, and hid the ends under the overlap and at the end of the leaf. The leaf shrank in the process, but at least it's one piece..

So as of the 12th, it was fixed and ready for fun things. 

I didn't work on it too much for the rest of the week, but I got a fair amount done over the weekend, including at 12th Night. I'm using bullion to fill the petals. It was probably purl originally, but I have a lot more bullion and it's a pretty similar thread. 

It is far less painful than using passing thread for fills (like I did on the gloves). Plunging threads is the worst. Wire for everything!

Embroidered Book Cover - The Embroidering, part 1

Once the planning stages were done it was time to embroider. But first I wanted to make sure I remembered how to embroider on velvet - and also try out these new materials I had.

The way I learned to embroider on velvet involved tacking a piece of parchment paper on top of the fabric, and sewing right through it. In this case I also tacked the velvet onto stabilizer that was in a frame. This let me make sure the fabric was taught without crushing the precious velvet.

Test run

For my practice run I just copied one of the roses off of the full design. I used passing thread for the lines, and bullion for the fill. The veins are also passing thread, but this thread also has red silk wrapped around the core. I originally intended to fill each petal, but I decided it was better to get on with the main event.

I stretched more stabilizer over a scroll frame, and tacked down the velvet. I then traced the full pattern onto parchment paper and tacked that down. I was careful throughout to leave enough excess to be able to actually turn all this into the cover later.
Halfway through the process I decided that covering a smaller book and using only the inside part of the pattern was probably a good idea for my sanity. I'll use that sweet border some other time.

And then began the couching.

When I asked for feedback on the gloves, a major point was that usually two thread were couched side by side. Of course, looking at my pattern, that is only the case with the main lines. The leaves are a continuation of the main line, but using only on thread, creating the crossover that you can hopefully see below.

I can already see how two threads (and better materials) help make things less wavy.

 Here I have completed all the main lines, with relatively few mistakes. I forgot to do one leaf as I went by, so it doesn't look as smooth.

And as of the end of this weekend I've finished all the lines and have begun to remove the paper!
I thought the lines would be the most painful part, but the paper removal is definitely winning.
The silver passing thread I used for the corner roses is wrapped more tightly and is much more wire like than the gold thread was. I can see this being amazing for longer lines, but for the tiny flowers it was kind of a pain.

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.