Felicia Margerye Amondesham (mka Amy Bodine) is a friend of mine in the West Kingdom Needleworker's Guild. She's actually the newest guild minister, as of this last October Crown. Since she's also in the local area (Southern Shores/San Jose, CA) and attended the West Kingdom Choir's practices for a while, I got to see some of the pieces she was working on. I watched her stitch this needlebook, and even I who love counted stitch was amazed at how TINY these stitches are. I asked her for some information on the project and the following is what she wrote:

This is a needlebook that I embroidered in petite point & constructed similar to a 16th Century style needlebook. My inspiration was a pattern taken from the book Patrons, de Broderie et de Lingerie du XVIe Siecle, (Patterns, Embroider y: Early 16th Century) by Claude Nourry & Pierre de Saincte Louie. It’s a reprint of a set of 16th Century embroidery pattern books. The cover pattern features a green interwoven lattice with red roses & hearts in the open spaces. It was stitched on a ground fabric of 28-count linen with a tent stitch, using 2 strands of Au Ver a Soie Soie d’Alger spun silk thread.  

I chose to work on a 28-count linen because I wanted the cover of my needlebook to show several repetitions of the pattern, while keeping the overall size of the needlebook small enough to not take up a lot of space in a pouch. I also recalled a couple of cushion covers from 16th Century England that I got a chance to view firsthand in a display at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Those covers were worked in tent stitch; the thread count was difficult to determine, having nothing available to use as a reference to measure it, but I’d say it was somewhere between 20-count and the 28-count that I used for my piece.

Needlepoint pieces from the 16th Century were often worked with either wool or silk; silk seemed the better choice in this case given the small stitches. I used the Au Ver a Soie brand because I wanted a fiber with less sheen and more fullness that would cover the ground fabric adequately. I chose the colors green & gold because I was originally going to give away the needlebook in an exchange with other members of the West Kingdom Needleworker’s Guild (and the Kingdom’s colors are green & gold).  

The needlebook is lined with saffron-colored linen; the pages are green wool flannel. It is kept closed with a lucet-woven cord (made from the same silk thread) that loops around a button. It has a piece of cardboard between the cover & the liner to add stiffness; in period they would have used several sheets of paper glued together, but I chose to use the cardboard as I was in a rush to complete the finish work on this piece so I could enter it in a competition.

I worked on this piece off & on over a period of 6 months – a lot longer than I expected. I also wasn’t terribly happy with the way the silk thread laid on the edge where I sewed the needlecase cover closed; it was difficult to sew closed with the cardboard inside. Other than that, I love how the piece came out (and I’m glad I wound up not giving it away!)

The words and pictures on this page were authored by Felicia/Amy, who gave me permission to use them on my site on October 5, 2007.