Early 17th Century Portuguese Embroidery Booklet

Small pieces of embroidered fabric were loosely stitched together in a pattern book from 17th century Portugal. Some of the embroideries include the double running stitch, also known as blackwork or Holbein stitch. Pictures of this book are made available by the Met Museum here.

(Picture from the Met Museum)

By zooming in on these pictures, you can actually count the stitches. For example, below is a zoomed in picture of the green embroidery pictured above. For every dark spot on the thread line, that would be a stitch.

(Met Museum)

Here is my interpretation of the green braid pattern:

Here is another page from the same book:

(Met Museum)

Below is a zoomed in picture of the page from above. Just like with the green thread, you can count the dark spots on the brown thread line to count the stitches that create the pattern.

(Met Museum)