Embroidered book covers at Penguin

An embroidered cover (front and back) by Jenny Hart for Sarah Blake's novel The Postmistress and The Jane Austen Book Club cover by Helen Musselwhite.
Both are commissioned by Penguin Books for their newMade By Hand series.

"Six of Penguin's most popular recent fiction titles have been redesigned as a set with new craft-inspired covers. The Penguin By Hand series makes use of embroidery, crochet and quilting, with each technique further evoked on paper through the use of some serious embossing...
Publishing in September, the Penguin By Hand series features the following titles: The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak (cover by Emma Ruth Hughes); The Help by Kathryn Stockett (cover by Brenda Riddle); The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Banks (cover by Genevieve Dionne); The Postmistress by Sarah Blake (cover by Jenny Hart); The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler (cover by Helen Musselwhite); and The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards (cover byDominique Falla)."

Fabulous! Thanks to Bridging Arts volunteer Katrina Williams for discovering this. Katrina keeps a very sharp eye open for news and fresh ideas.

A snip at Sainsbury's

How about this for a great buy from Sainsbury's. Ninety-seven per cent cotton and a print that looks ten times more expensive than it actually was....

Idle days in captivity

... and Mary Queen of Scots' imagination ran wild. Taken so by surprise by these panels at the V&A that wanted to photograph them all.  But on second glance they are seriously weird. What DID she have on her mind?
These embroideries were made between 1569 and about 1585 while she was under house arrest in England.  George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury was responsible for Mary and she stayed at one or other of the Shrewsbury estates. Elizabeth (Bess) Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury worked with Mary Queen of Scots on these.

According to the V&A: "Embroidery was a form of therapy and communication for Mary, as well as a conventional occupation for wealthy and elite women. Most of the motifs depicted were copied from the wood-cut illustrations of emblem books and natural histories by well-known authors such as Claud Paradin, Conrad Gessner, Pierre Belon. These often represented sentiments and morals from classical literature and contemporary folklore, and were chosen by Mary to express her most private thoughts at a time when all her written correspondence was being monitored by her captors."