I was reading the Ashmolean Museum Handbook to English Embroideries (Brooks) the other day. It's a great little book, showing 22 or 23 pieces - mostly tent stitch with raised work. Text is on one page, and the facing page has a full page (although it's an undersized book) clear photograph of the embroidery involved.

About half the text is about the history and symbolism of the piece, and then we get some comments about the construction of the piece. I'm entraced by the idea of making a cartouche (a frame) consisting of a piece of rolled parchment, completely covered in detached buttonhole stitch. (so it's like a coloured tube).

Anyway, at the beginning of the book, it has the poem that the phrase "Twixt Art and Nature" comes from. It's a poem written about a little girl that has died, and the phrase is in reference to her embroidery.

I just found a short video where the curator of the Bard Center for Graduate Research and theMetropolitan Museum of Art (where the Twixt Art and Nature exhibition was held) talks about several pieces from the book - the images and a bit about the construction. It shows raised pieces from different angles, which is nice.

http://zishan.ca/video/vr2vTYWfI3U/watch.html

or it that doesn't work,

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://img.youtube.com/vi/vr2vTYWfI3U/0.jpg&imgrefurl=http://zishan.ca/elizabethan%2Bembroidery/&usg=__jSV16dz3rtH-mTD2Xtda7t2mdT0=&h=360&w=480&sz=20&hl=en&start=6&sig2=uTqJajUb7p2z0I5tVBRSog&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=0HLG34MA4HZ02M:&tbnh=97&tbnw=129&prev=/images%3Fq%3Delizabethan%2Bembroidery%2Bband%2Bdesign%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=VAkDTJDWCcGHkQXe4uWZDQ