Stories from the Arabian Nights - slip case

While I'm working on Kate's Crow, I thought I show you something else I've done that uses the same technique, at least in part.

This is a slip case for Stories from the Arabian Nights, by Laurence Housman and illustrated by Edmund Dulac. The book itself still has its original dust jacket, which includes the incense burner design, though just in outline. I love the Art Nouveau swirls of the smoke rising from it, so I used this design for the embroidery on the slip case. The boards of the book, underneath the dust jacket, are in a terracotta fabric, so I used a similar shade for the silk dupion I used as the background.

The stitching is clearer in a close up:

The 'smoke' and the legs of the pot are in chain stitch, in Gutermann Dekor metallic thread, though in this case in gold. Of the metallic threads I've tried, I find Dekor lends itself best to complicated shapes, as it's not stiff at all and so will turn corners easily. I've mentioned before some problems with using it, but as long as you're careful it works nicely, and I think is especially effective in chain stitch.

The pot itself is in appliquéd gold kid leather (which was very fiddly to do, as I recall!), with split stitch in stranded cotton filling in the gaps in blue.

This isn't the most complex slip case I've done, but I think it's one of the most effective, as the use of a motif by the book's illustrator links them together.