09.05.08

Needlelace…

Posted in Samplers, Stitching Genres, Lace at 7:30 am by deRomilly

I got a bee in my bonnet to try to learn something new wieth my stitching recently. I’ve had a shelf full of needlelace books for years now, and every once in a while have pulled them out, failed miserably, and put them away again. I’ve been the same way with actual band samplers. I’m afraid I’m not really cut out for working my samples in a sane manner where they’re easy to retrieve. They always seem to work better when done on any old scrap of fabric I happen to have to hand at the moment.

Currently my band sampler is only about a foot and a half long. It looks like this, having some herringbone where I started doing TAST last year before I dropped out awfully quickly, and some buttonhole stitch…

fullsampler.jpg  closeupherringbone.jpg

This time I decided that since I’ve been doing stumpwork successfully for some time now, I should be able to do needlelace, too. I started a wired flower in cloth stitch (corded buttonhole) a month ago and had a bit of success - I still need to get green silk so I can do leaves, but it’s destined to be a brooch, and I’m really proud of the stitching. :) Photos soon, I hope.

So I pulled out my band sampler, and I’ve been doing all the boring gruntwork of learning many variations of needleace stitches - ripping out and restarting over and over until I get the hang of them. I’ve got several sizes of thread going here, and that is teaching me a lot about how sizes work as well. I think most of my problems in the past have been related to using too large a stitch for the size thread I was using.

detatchedbuttonhole1.jpg   detatchedbuttonhole2.jpg

This is fun! I’m liking the lace patterns that are emerging, and I finally think I’ve gotten a handle on tension. And I’ve got ideas out of my ears for designs and steps to go with this. Of course, that’s always part of my problem — too many ideas to actually manufacture the art! (and several of them integrate that wonderful bead stash from my last post!)

08.11.08

Mediterranean or Armenian Knotted Lace

Posted in Stitching Genres, Lace at 3:37 pm by deRomilly

I  just discovered this form recently — there was a post asking about the book by Elena Dickson on the h-needlework list. I was so intrigued that I bought it sight unseen and without any real reviews.

All I can say is wow - it’s beautiful! And faster than a lot of needlelace, unless you mess up. Errors have to be fixed by carefully cutin gout the offending area and beginning the knotting again.

I’ve been playing with larger threads than she recommends - both becuase I thought they’d be easier to learn on (they were, for me) and because I saw a potential to use this as an alternative to crochet for hip scarves and other bellydance embellishment (I’ve also been playing with macrame for this purpose, more on that later!)

armenianlace1.JPGI like the effect, and may make myself a hipscarf using this technique. One of the advantages I can see immediately is that if a thread breaks I wouldn’t lose an entire row of beads and coins, the way I do on the purchased, crocheted scarves.

And since I try to go through all the stitching on the purchased scarves myself because of that ravelling tendency, starting from scratch with this technique doesn’t sound quite so bad right now, although time is always an issue!