On Sep 25, 2004, at 16:49, Bev Walker wrote:
Devon wrote:
Although I suppose it is possible that it is a bobbin made
tape, it doesn't look like the tapes I make with bobbins. Instead, it looks
more like a shoe lace, by which I mean, the threads are all going sort of
diagonal and there is no footside or edge pair or sign of pinning.
Without seeing the tape, I can suggest a few things - first, yes, it
could have been made on a loom, though if you see a diagonal direction
to the thread it was likely plaited. What we call 'finger weaving' is
plaiting with multiple strands. Finger weaving, as the name suggests, is
done without a loom.
Flat "shoelace" tape can also be made with bobbins, and look exactly as described by Devon: threads running diagonally, no footside edge and no sign of pins. That's because it's made without any pins and without a "proper" edge.
It is shown/described in Bridget Cook's "Practical Skills" - "Section VI; Carrying pairs, raised work, fillings", samples 3b and 4b. She describes it as a method of carrying 3 or 4 pairs and doesn't take it any further, but it can be done with any number of pairs you want, except it gets a bit tricky to tension, when there are many pairs. Also, the more pairs, the more diagonal the effect.
You can't see the diagonal effect, but you can see bits of multi-paired, pinless, edge-less "tape" in the Partridge in the Pear Tree (URL in the signature, pre-99 designs) - all the tree branches are started that way (and I now wish I had *finished* them that way, too, all the way to the tree trunk <g>)
Yesterday, at an art group, I was staring at a poster reproduction of a Botticelli, called 'Annunciation'
Vibeke Ervo (from Denmark) taught me to always look out for the Annunciation paintings, because, usually, both Anne and Mary are busy with some handwork, and - sometimes - it's lacemaking. So I haunted Polish churches for a while (even my very religious cousin thought I was overdoing it a bit <g>), until the light bulb finally came on: it has to be a country with a lacemaking tradition, which Poland's not. Duh... :)
What fascinated me was the trim on her cape - it was yellow (gold?), and I would have said the trim was 'brocade woven' except the intersticial areas of the trim were transparent - looking distinctly lace-like, if quite geometric. I wondered how it was made
Plaits on top of a band of the same colour? Lena Dahren (from Sweden), whom I met while in Prague, is experimenting with 2 pair plaits, in a totally different direction from the one I took in my 2-Pair Inventions (second run is back from the printer's, BTW, though I still have a few copies left from the first run). Mine are pretty much pedestrian, in the "tradition" of the Russian Tape fillings (only I came up with them before I saw those fillings <g>) Hers hark back to older times, and the joins are different. Also there's more variety, because, sometimes, a *single thread* forms a shape. *Very* exciting.
But, she says, it's only possible when using metallic thread (or wire), because fiber thread doesn't have enough stiffness/weight to hold such sindgle-thread shapes. But, with the early lace being so often made *in* metal...
--- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) Healthy US through The No-CARB Diet: no C-heney, no A-shcroft, no R-umsfeld, no B-ush.
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