Upon rereading your message, I just realised that you were asking specifically about getting the ground flat and even. Several of the books I have suggest folding the backing material (brown paper or whatever) at the point where you are working, so that you have enough room to move your hook. After every couple rows, unfold the backing material and make sure that it's lying flat. A little bit of loose tension can be absorbed, as long as it's not so loose that it sags, but if it's too tight and "cups," it'll be quite noticeable and that part of the design will probably wear out first, because of the tension on the threads.
Just a side note--one of the things I noticed since I started looking at historical pieces more carefully is the way that Irish crocheters used different grounds. The most common chain-and-picot ground that we use is found on a lot of close work, like the bodice of a gown, for example, because it's very dense and not as strong as the coarser sc-over-chain grounds, which are often found, say on the train of the gown and cover a larger area. I imagine that apart from the design considerations (the contrast between grounds is very effective), the coarser ground is stronger and probably faster to produce because it results in heavy bars that can support larger motifs. For a christening gown, a chain-and-picot ground would be fine, but for something as large as a wedding gown, one can see why different grounds would be used. Avital ----- Original Message ----- From: "Hopkins Family" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 9:08 PM Subject: [lace] Irish Crocheted Lace > Has anyone tried this type of lace. I'm thinking of doing some for a > christening gown. The part that scares me, though, is that you put in the > ground after you make the motifs, thus joining them together. It seems to me > that it would be difficult to keep the ground looking even as you do this. Has > anyone done this, and is it hard to keep it even? Any hints would be greatly > appreciated. > > Thank you, > > Sharon in - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
