[...] nothing suitable (thick enough) for the two single gimps (I figured I'd need
Perle 5 for effect). So I would up pairs of bobbins with Perle 8 in
aqua, and instead of passing the threads over the gimp, I passed the linen
threads through the pair of Perle 5's and gave the gimps a twist [...]
I personally think it looks a lot better, especially when working
in colour. I remember the first time I did a gimp (as a learning exercise) and
used purple gimp with white workers and couldn't see a thing. This way the
colour would really stand out.
Since I spent the first few years of my lacemaking "below the radar", I have no idea of what the "official ruling" is on such practice... :) But, as soon as I started experimenting with colour, I too noticed the "under/over", "now you see it, now you don't" effect of a single gimp in a colour that's different from the "base" one. And I solved it in exactly the same way Noelene has: by using a pair, of slightly thinner threads, and twisting between passes. I don't use the solution much -- haven't, at all, in PG, for example -- I try, if possible, to find a *really thick* thread and run it single, hoping it'll be a more acceptable "middle ground", but I've never forgotten it, either, and continued to experiment with it.
There's an "addendum" to this practice, valuable (I hope) to people who work in colour...
A twisted pair of gimps adds only about as much as a single thread to the overall width of the piece, because the threads lie -- more or less -- on top of one another (each other?).
What it means, in practical terms, is that one can wind a pair of the *same thickness* as the "base" thread, and "draw" a *thin* (equivalent to a single thread), but *solid* line down one's pattern, outlining a motif (as Noelene's done) while, *also*, allowing one to have a "normal" pair in reserve to use for other purposes (as workers, for example, or to "stray" into the ground)
It also means (and that was the use that *particularly* pleased me on discovery <g>) that one can "draw" a solid, *horizontal* line of a different colour, across one's work. The "chequerboard effect" of working a different-colour wk pr, in cloth stitch, through a trail, has often bothered me, and "doing it twice" bothered me twice as much, besides taking up double the space. But, if you take your "outlining pair" across to the other side of the trail/tape as *a twisted "gimp"* and then back (or switch the "outlining pairs, if you have one each side), your total space used is the same as if you'd made a *single* cloth st pass of a worker pair, and both lines will be *solid*, with no chequerboard (over/under) effect.
Again, it's not a technique I use often; most of my patterns are aimed at publishing, and I don't like to include "novelty tricks" in those, as they take up far too much space eplaining the "how's" and the "why's". But, before I realised that, I did "let fly" with a pattern which used the "not-really-gimp" way of leading pairs through their paces... :) See my website (URL in the signature), choose non-series before 2000, and the first thumbnail (butterfly, large) is it...
Yours, thinking that, perhaps, I ought to have "hogged" all the above info <g>... I've accepted the "position" of the "BL Editor" of IOLI (first "salvo" in the summer issue) -- a function which carries the responsibility of 3 articles and a pattern every year. I think I'm "all set" (4 variations on a pattern, and 3 articles to go with them) for the first year, but, with the ideas for the *articles* being in short supply...
----- Tamara P Duvall Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd/
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