# Cover seams

> Three full-bleed photographs stacked edge to edge, each a chapter, with a numbered plate straddling every seam: half on one photograph and half on the next, alternating left and right, and the last plate stepping off the third photograph onto your theme's paper. Includes three replaceable example photographs. States no colour and no font of its own.

Canonical: https://patternpaste.com/pattern/cover-seams.html
Section: Cover
Access: Included in Pattern Paste access.
Needs: Requires a block theme on WordPress 7.0 to 7.1. Classic themes and page builders are outside our supported setup. Adaptive patterns use the block theme’s colour, spacing and typography presets; styled variations declare their own colours or type.
Blocks: cover, group, heading, paragraph
Keywords: cover, photo, stacked, chapters, seam, story

## Variations (2)

### Three seams (the default)

Identical markup in every theme.

Ink, paper, ink: each plate is your contrast or your base, its type the other, so every plate reads on any photograph you choose.

### Buttercream and copper

This variation states its own colours and states its own type: identical in every theme.

A barn-wedding look: buttercream ground and middle plate, deep brown plates either side, copper chapter labels; a Didot display over Gill Sans.


---

## The signature moment: the plates sit on the seams between photographs

Each plate is pulled up by `clamp(-10rem, -9vw, -6rem)` so it sits half on one
photograph and half on the next, alternating left, right, left; the third
plate steps off the last photograph onto a band of your theme's paper. The
plates join the photographs instead of sitting inside any one of them.

## Why the covers are nested

A cover clips its overflow and its photograph is a positioned layer, so a
plate lapped across two SIBLING covers is either cut off or painted under the
next photograph. So the third cover holds the second, the second holds the
first, and each plate is a later sibling of the cover above its seam, inside
the inner container of the cover below it. The plates are covers too (a 100%
veil, no image): a plain group is not positioned and paints under the
photograph it laps.

## Type never sits on a photograph

Every word is on a plate: `contrast` under `base` type, or the inverse, so
each pair is the theme's own body pair at full strength in every check theme.
The photographs carry no veil and no text. Headings are on the theme's ladder
(`x-large`, their job is hierarchy); copy is `medium` at 1.55.

## What it inherits, what it decides

Inherits every colour, the typeface and the spacing scale. Decides the lap
depth, the photograph heights (the first a 40rem floor, the others the space
under each plate), a 36rem plate on a 1240px measure, and the alternation.

## What a buyer changes first

The three photographs: select a cover and choose Replace. Then the plates'
copy; keep each heading to two lines at 390.

## The Styled look

`variations/buttercream-and-copper.html` states its own colours and faces: deep brown plates (#3a261b) either side of a buttercream one (#f4e9cc), the page below buttercream, and copper chapter labels, a light copper (#d08a55) on the brown and a deep copper (#8f4a22) on the buttercream so each passes AA. A Didot stack (Bodoni MT, Big Caslon, Georgia) sets the headings over Gill Sans.

## Included images

The copied markup includes WordPress Photo Directory example photographs. The
public image URLs keep the examples visible after pasting. Select a cover and
choose **Replace** to use your own Media Library files. See
[image credits](/image-credits/) for the sources and licenses.