Based on a late 13th century Spanish reliquary purse; KIK/IRPA object no. 43380. I designed the pattern myself, based on the portion of the extant piece that was generally intact and unobscured. See Medieval Arts & Crafts for a slightly different interpretation. I am currently working on drafting the rest of the pattern, after lots of squinting at those archival photos and a healthy dose of guesswork. I'll post that pattern soon.Materials for this purse: 32-ct ground (cotton, I think), light blue linen lining (just something I had laying around). Embroidery worked in Kreinik silk floss (1096, 2016, 5013 & 7172).
The drawstrings were worked with pairs of individual strands of the Kreinik floss in a broad lace of 5 loops; the suspension loop with single strands in a lace piol (braids #1 and #14 in Tak v Bowes.., respectively). While I'm very happy with the quality and fineness of the suspension loop—if I may say so myself!—I do think it's proportionally too small for this purse. However, since it took me around 8 hrs to make that length of braid, I wasn't about to scrap it and start again.
The gimp thread for the turkshead knots were also made from the Kreinik floss, plied and wound around a linen core. I'm not entirely happy with the result (at this point, I was just trying to be consistent by using the same type of threads for everything), but the resulting knots are passable for my first attempts. I may replace the first two I made at a later date, since I quickly got better at tying them, and they look noticeably worse than the rest (at least to me!)
The side-stitching, as you can see, was worked in two colors. I was very happy with the result, except for the fact that I should have doubled the threads in each tablet hole; the woven band ended up being slightly too narrow for adequate coverage of the seams and some "blank space" can be seen peeking through, as well as the warp-stitches. Live and learn..
