Embroidered Book Cover - Finished!

This is old news now, since I finished about 5 days ago.

I was just given a digital camera for my birthday - ideal for taking photos of the book - but we've been having a fight and the camera (actually, the computer) won. For the moment, anyway.

I wanted to show the book spread out, both front and back sides - but it was too wide for the scanner, so I haven't.


* Buttons for the Spine

I was going through my button collection, selecting a couple to weave or buttonhole cover or whatever, when I discovered two round silk velvet buttons in black that were absolutely perfect.

You can't really see them, since this is a scan of the book, but the threads are wrapped around them.

They fit in so well with the black silk velvet of the base cover it was a case of "simple. Job done".

* Buttons/beads for the ends of the strings

Now here, I ended in disappointment. The thicker cover meant the strings had to cover more ground. By the time they wrapped around the spine buttons, there was very little length left. Less than an inch. Putting decorations on the ends of them would have looked crowded, as they would have hung right up beside the spine of the book.

I could have tied more string (assuming I had some waxed string to match, or even contrast nicely) but I thought "enough".

I will "do" buttons another time. I was looking forward to them, but design needs must.

* I put a gold cord right around the edges of the cover. I thought it pulled the design together nicely. It was actually some gold fringeing that I unravelled!

* Pasting the cover down

In period, the cover would have been pasted to the goat vellum that forms the cover that is part of the construction of the book. However I didn't want to do this, because I want to be able to take the cover off, and be able to see Helen's (the maker of the book) beautiful stitching on the spine.
This means the cover can slip up or down a few millimetres but that's not going to hurt. It's just a matter of adjusting it if I'm showing it to someone.

I am very pleased and proud of this project. And I'm keeping it for myself - which was the object of the exercise - to make something beautiful for myself (and I just happened to get involved in Elizabethan embroidery along the way! *grin)