Lise-Aurore said " I'm thinking of mixing bobbin lace
and needlelace. Here's the question. Let's say I'm
making a Russian-type lace doily, and have made the
tape/braid in 60/2 linen. Sould I decide to make
needlelace inside the doily, what size of thread would
I use to make the needlelace? Do I use the same size
of thread, or a thread slightly smaller?"
I played around with working needle lace fillings in
Bruges some time ago, so much the same technical
issue, though in 50/2 linen. Basically, I'm not that
fond of couching needle lace at the beginning, and
oversewing at the end, nor of Bruges fillings (not
much variety, and too many pairs constantly being
added and thrown out - Russian chain lace seems to
have solved that issue), so this seemed to get the
best of both worlds. I did use the same thread, and
that seemed to work, but the main problem was getting
the balance in the weight of the design. The filling
stitches needed to be very bold to stand up to the
outline, so they really needed to be very solid, and
the patterned ones made up of blocks of twisted
stitches, not just plain loops. Nets of buttonholed
bars (sort of Argentan ground) worked well. Using
finer threads only made this worse, and thicker made
it all too "clunky". The other point was that the
footside of the tape needed consideration. For some
fillings, a border of open twisted needlelaace
stitches round the tape was needed to set off a
solidish filling. What I actually did was make the
tape in the usual way, then take it off the pillow and
tack it onto the folded calico(UK)/muslin(US) and work
on that. Several fillings were cut out... You may
have to make samples before committing to a major
project. Having tried it and got it out of my system,
I decided against making a major project!
I think these mixed laces are more "Fitz" than
mongrel, ie highclass illegitimate - after the now
aristocratic families descended from an English royal
mistress. Using bobbin tapes with needle fillings
goes back to the seventeenth century, and by the next
century (not sure when it started) needle- as well as
bobbin-made motives were being applied to drochel
(bobbin-made net). This was replaced very quickly by
machine net when it became available, though for some
reason, bobbin-made Honiton was sometimes grounded on
a needle-made net.
For 21st century developments of these techniques,
there is Ann Collier's work, most notably, I think, in
her "Lace Fans" (Batsfords, ISBN 0713487348). She
mixes different lace techniques very freely. One
"standard" way is to have needle-made figures or
flowers or whatever grounded with bobbin lace, where
she has used very varied nets to great effect. She
also works bobbin lace fan leaves, and just applies
needle lace figures to them. In some, the background
of the scene (houses etc) are also in bobbin lace, and
the different qualities of the two techniques works
well to make them the background. She doesn't give
many details of the threads used, though the general
impression is that in this sort, the background bobbin
lace is worked in slightly finer threads than the
needle lace. I suspect at this level of working you
would have to do a lot of sampling to get a successful
result from cold!
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger -
all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
-
To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line:
unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
