Nobelese Largesse Swap 11: Kingdom/Household Pride

The theme for Nobelese Largesse Swap #11 is Kingdom/Household Pride. It's actually a theme I suggested--I figured we could all learn a little about someone else's kingdom while we were at it! My recipient is Lady Izza bint Amat al-Rahman, who lives in the Shire of Arenal in Meridies.

Meridies is crazy. That was my first impression, anyway, as I began browsing around the kingdom website. Did you know they have FOUR populace badges?! Four! So, I had to find out a bit more about these badges if I intended to incorporate them into my project.

Other items I considered incorporating into my project were Meridies' kingdom arms, the arms of the Shire of Arenal, and Izza's own arms. Putting all of these things onto a single item would be WAY too busy, so I decided to pare it down to the Kingdom badge (but ...which one?!) and a single set of the wings from Arenal's arms. I planned to do a limp-bound book (hooray for new skills!), with the kingdom badge on the front and the wings on the back.

I tried to find out about the Meridies badges on my own. Google didn't reveal anything, though. Then I tried asking in various groups on Facebook, still to no avail. Finally, I had to ask my recipient (via the swap coordiantors) which badge she preferred to use, since as best as I could figure they're all interchangeable.

The answer came back: Izza prefers the third option above. Great! The leather I had chosen for the project was white already, so it should be easy to tool and paint the black bar and the three stars on the front, and the blue wings on the back.

I've only ever done plain books before, so I wasn't sure exactly how to place the designs to be centered on the covers. I figured, though, that I could just bind up the book and *then* tool the decorations, because I could open it to lay the covers flat on the marble slat for tooling.

The binding went well: I did five folios of ten pages each, for a hundred-page book (5 folios x 10 sheets = 50, front-and-back = 100 pages). After folding the flap over and securing it with a white leather cord (photo, right), I worried that the Meridies badge would look really squished in the visible front cover space. But then I realized that the flap itself could be one third of the badge design! This made me really happy.

That happiness was short-lived.

I don't know if it was the dying process or the tanning process (or both) for this particular leather, but it did not take to tooling AT ALL. And then the paint wouldn't adhere to the surface, either. And in the process of fighting with it, several of the pages got stained. All in all, it was a catastrophic failure--completely unsalvageable.

I was not at all eager to jump into anything else even remotely experimental at this point--the deadline loomed, the holidays were upon me, AND we were in the late stages of buying our first house. So I opted for a tried-and-true item: a Viking chain necklace. They are from the correct time period for Izza's persona, and I was 100% confident I would not experience any project failures--catastrophic or otherwise!

Actually, I made two necklaces. Both necklaces are woven from 26 gauge enameled copper wire (I sure do love that wire!), with five starting petals. I used a trusty Sharpie marker as my mandrel.

The first one I made was not entirely period--it's my own created design of single-weave in one color over double-weave of another color. In this case, it was single black and double silver -- Meridies colors. The inner core and outer layer are woven concurrently and drawn together.

Single black over double silver in progress.

Then, because this is not technically a period design, I also made a standard Viking double-weave chain in just silver.

Silver double-weave, before drawing.

They went in the mail today, and should be delivered on Friday. I hope Izza likes them!

A New Adventure: Bookbinding!

I attended Atlantia's Summer University event last weekend. One of the classes I took was long-stitch bookbinding, in which we created a small, leather-bound book from circa 14th century Germany. I got the hang of it almost immediately, and I couldn't wait to get home and try making some from scratch!

I've recently acquired some 3-4oz white cowhide leather, which I decided would be perfect for the project. I cut out rectangles that are 11" x 6" (this was SO much easier to cut than the leather I use for blackjacks and bottells!).

For the pages, I used what I have on hand: white printer paper. I cut it in half, creating 5.5" x 8.5" pieces. I then folded these in half, so that the pages of the book will be 5.5" x 4.25". I grouped the pages into folios of five sheets, and each book has five folios.

The class instructor, Runa Barefoot, provided us with a template to mark the stitching holes in both the leather and the folios. I used this same template on my books, and punched the holes with a hand awl.

With that done, it was time to stitch the folios to the leather. I did the stitching with white linen thread. Beginning with the first folio, I stitched from the inside out through the pages and then the leather. I formed a small loop with the thread, and then stitched back through the same hole. Moving down the spine, I stitched in-to-out, then out-to-in, and so on until I reached the last hole. Adding the second folio, I stitched back up the spine to the top.

Before beginning to stitch the third folio, I stitched through the small loop I had formed at the beginning, and then tightened the loop down flush with the leather. Then I stitched the third folio down the spine. At the other end, I fed the needle under the stitch between the first and second folios before sewing in the fourth folio. I then repeated the process one more time for the last folio.

At the end of the last folio, I again fed the needle through the joining stitch. Then I stitched back into the final hole to end up with the needle and thread inside the last folio. I tied off the thread an snipped off the excess.

Convincing the leather to stay folded over and keep the book closed is something of a challenge. For the moment I'm weighing it down to sorta "train" the leather to stay where it belongs, but I'm going to devise some method of clasping it or tying it. Stay tuned for future projects!

Here's what it looks like, unrestrained: