LARGESS: Jeweled Book Weights
(Taught July 16, 2015 for the Aire Faucon Largess A&S Night – This is a hands-on activity night taking about two hours.)
People in period were very protective of their books; many illuminations show people reading on top of pillows or handling books with towels to protect the outside. Likewise modern people are interested in protecting books, for example holding a book open when cooking without breaking the spine.
A common cheap bookweight is taking 28 pennies (2 rows of 14) and sealing them inside some duct tape. For Largess we are going to take some ends of trim and some scraps of cloth, decorate them with beads and make Jeweled Book Weights.
Some hints to help with decorations:
One) SEWING ON BEADS (INDIVIDUALLY)
- Find a needle and thread that can go through the bead more than once.
- Make certain the bead does not have a cutting edge on the hole that will destroy the thread in time.
- Go through the bead three time. Going through only once or twice makes it loose. This is whether you double the thread or not – the amount of stitches secures the bead more than the thickness of the thread. Basically you want to “backstitch” the bead on to lock it in place.
Two) SEWING A STRAIGHT LINE OR CURVE OF BEADS
- Do not sew on individually
- Do not sew by stringing the beads and sewing the string down
- To get a smooth continuous curve, pick up a bead at the start, then go down, come back up at the start of the bead, go through the bead and pick up two to five more (depends on the size of the bead, you will get a feel for this as you work with them), go down in the line, come back up between some of your added beads – go through them and pick up more. Basically you are backstitching the beads down. The double stitching allows curves and creates a straighter line then laying down a string of beads.
- To create even spaces between the beads, once done go back over line and anchor down the string between each bead without going through the bead again.
- You have now sewed down the beads vertically and horizontally; these will stay.
Three) TASSELS