Embroidery, Medieval Style

In Courting Trouble the stepmother Waldberg supplements the family income by creating embroideries and illuminations for the church. This is how she works with metallic thread:

She was working with two needles. One sewed a gold thread on the surface of the work, very close to the previous gold thread she had laid down. With the second needle she sewed tiny silk stitches across the gold to anchor it to the cloth. She had explained to me once that this technique was used so that the expensive gold thread was not wasted on the wrong side.

The Stepmother

Cynethrith's stepmother, Waldberg, a character in  Courting Trouble

[My stepmother] was sitting behind an embroidery frame, working gold thread onto a fabric strip for the bishop’s vestment. Her two daughters were with her. Hilda was standing near my stepmother reciting, with more feeling than required, a poem about the crumbling remains of a once magnificent city that had been built by giants.