I think I understand your top sewing explanation now. Interesting. I didn't know you could do that. I wonder if you could somehow make a "bottom sewing" too, so that you could have whatever you want be on top independent of the working order...
None that I've been able to figure out so far. But, to tell the truth, it never seemed worth the effort of *trying* :) They (Russians) also have a 3-D gimp technique (flat on one side, riding on top of the tape on the other) and *that one* is exciting enough so that I *had* "flipped" it over and can now do it wrong side up. Very pleased with myself am about it, too :)
Is there anything bad about the top sewing viewed from the wrong side, other than that the wrong piece of lace is on top?
Not *really*. But it looks a bit "messy" from the wrong side; undefined. Like driving or riding a train through slums -- one *could* live there, though one wouldn't *want* to... But you have to look very closely and pay attention to see it, so you can just ignore it if that's how you're minded...
I finished my tape lace piece yesterday, and I'm trying Beds/Cluny now. It seems like every new style of lace I try is harder to make...
That's the object of the game :) Where would you be, if biology'd stopped at Linnaeus, and communications at text hand-written with a quill?
Well, after this piece I think I'll go back to Torchon for a while, and everything will go really fast ;-)
There's *lots* to explore in Torchon and "the environs" (different aspects, dictated by nationality and time-line)... I get *incadescent* when people put down Torchon as being of no account, and brag about their PG or Binche and other, "fancier", laces. Torchon is a "hub"; a "gate" to all other lace techniques, much more so than the tapes. If you get your Torchon -- in all its myriad mutations -- "down pat", there's very little else you'll have to learn from scratch to plug the holes in your knowledge when the time comes to learn something else; you'll have the leisure of learning new stuff in small increments, "on top", as it were...
If, OTOH, you start anywhere else, your "holes" are likely to be enormous... I've heard of people who make *only* Honiton.... *Gorgeus* Honiton, to be fair. But they have "two left hands", when it comes to anything else... Same's true about the tapes. Some laces limit one's horizon instead of opening it up.
We are no longer under the financial pressure of making just a few patterns, in a single technique, perfectly and fast -- so that we can keep our kids fed through the winter on the proceeds (I'd like to see anyone *try*, in the US <g>). Being an amateur may or may not let you topple over the "sloppy" edge of executing the particular lace as best you can -- that depends on your own personality. But it certainly *does* free us to explore and experiment, at our own pace, and to settle down with whatever feels most comfortable.
Explore Torchon. I hated it -- because it didn't have enough curved lines to suit my taste -- and moved away from it as fast as I could. But I've never ceased being grateful to it for teaching me so many basic things, and I still come back to it every once in a while, when a new approach/pattern beckons (and, no, it's *not* always easy to "climb down" to it from the heights of a more "prestigious lace" <g>)...
Yours, quitting for the night... Dobranoc. ----- Tamara P Duvall Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd/
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