14th century inspired Klosterstich rose – turning a medieval inspired embroidery into a lid for a reliquary box .2

In my last posting “14th century inspired Klosterstich rose – turning a medieval inspired embroidery into a lid for a reliquary box .1” I showed you how I mounted my Klosterstich embroidery on the top side of the lid for my most recent reliquary box project.

But mounting the embroidery on top of the lid is just half of the work. A proper looking top also always needs a nice backside. Therefore I am going to take it one step further today and show you how I applied the silk fabric to the backside of the lid. 🙂

Going through my silk fabrics I found a nice piece of red silk in a suitable size. It is good to collect leftover fabrics from previous projects for occasions like this. The fast find made the decision concerning an appropriate fabric for the backside really easy. 🙂

But before I continue with my next steps, here the last progress picture I posted  about this project in order to refresh your memory: 

The mounted Klosterstich embroidery looks pretty, doesn’t it – but it definitely looks much better with a proper backside. And this is how I added the backside:

I chose a piece of red silk fabric for the backside which was just slightly bigger than the lid, as you can see on the picture above. All you actually need is a piece of fabric that has the size of the lid and enough seam allowance at all sides.

In order to save fabric I pinned the lid with the mounted Klosterstich embroidery to the silk fabric before I cut away the excess fabric. This way I only cut out the amount of fabric I actually need and can save the leftovers for another project in the future.

With my favorite pair of embroidery scissors I made small cuts starting from the outside border towards the middle – stopping rather close next to the already mounted embroidery – one cut after another along the seam allowance. You might remember this step from my previous posting concerning how I mounted the Klosterstich embroidery on top of the lid base.

The right distance in which you should stop your cut towards the edge of the lid is quite tricky – if you are not sure it’s always better to leave a little bit more uncut space – just in case. 🙂

Btw. cutting the fabric along the seam allowance helps you to avoid bulky fabric parts along the border when you start to fold the fabric to the inside. This cuts allow the fabric to spread out flat on the inside without creating any major visible folds. In case that you still get a very bulky fold along the border it’s safe to conclude that your cut just wasn’t long enough and therefore creates this bulky fold. 😀

…and here a picture of the backside progress so far:

…a short hint about the embroidery scissors:
Though normal scissors are quite fine for every day use, a good pair of embroidery scissors has one major advantage: the blades are sharp from the tip to the end of the blade and the blades are rather thin and firm. This allows you to make very exact and fine short cuts. Another advantage of good embroidery scissors is that they make it possible to cut small areas (for example: straight buttonholes or the example shown at the picture above) and to undo hand- or machine-sewn lines or embroidery rather easily.

If you don’t already own a good pair of embroidery scissors don’t worry – they are actually quite affordable. The prices for good embroidery scissors already start at around 9 or 10 US Dollars/Euros and they come in a wide range of varieties concerning size and design.

I own several different embroidery scissors but it seems like I always end up using just two of them – yes, I have two pairs of embroidery scissors which I favor – the one you can see on the picture above and one with a much shorter blade which has a very sharp point at the top part of the blade… 🙂

But back again to the lid for my reliquary box. After I made all the small cuts in the seam allowance, I started to fold the fabric to the inside as you can see on the picture underneath, pinning it in place as I proceeded along the border. The fabric of the mounted embroidery at the back of the lid makes pinning the fabric a quite easy task.

And here two pictures of the border to give you a better idea of this process:

As you can see at the picture above and underneath, I tried to pin the red silk fabric as close as possible to the border of the Klosterstich embroidery. The smaller the visible part in-between the embroidery and the backside fabric is, the easier it is to cover this section up.

…and many pins later – voilà: 

As you can see – it’s good to have a good amount of pins handy while working on projects like this… 😉

…and here a picture of the backside before I started sewing the silk to the fabric of the already mounted embroidery:

And the next step was quite basic – I just threaded some red thread into a sewing needle and attached the silk with many small stitches to the fabric of the already mounted embroidery. Yes, this was as boring as it sounds but it makes the following work steps so much easier… 🙂

I hope you enjoyed the new progress pictures of how I attached the silk fabric to the backside of the lid for my 14th century inspired Klosterstich rose reliquary box. In the next posting I will show you how I embellished the border of my lid – a very easy technique which can be used to cover the “transition point” between fabrics. 😀