Hi Spiders, As one who has both taken the Beginning of the End class from Ulrike and used the technique to finish a couple of Binche pieces, here's my take on the current discussion.
Processes don't come out of nowhere. The traditional method of overlapping and sewing laces together comes from the production methods of the time. Lacemakers made lace, and seamstresses sewed. The reason that the overlapping was done in the ground, was because that's the easiest place the seamstress to make the seam. Yardage lace would be seamed for application to a garment. This division of labor made sense (and cents!). Fast foward to today, and 1. The number of seamstresses available to do this fastidious sewing is diminishing. 2. We lacemakers make a lot more lace that ends where it began instead of production yardage. Ulrike's theory is that current lacemakers need current solutions. She advocates a number of things that are counter to tradition, like omitting picots, since we don't have Ladies' maids to pin them out for us and Binche is Binche with or without the picots and much easier to maintain without them, thank you. On the finishing front, her cheeky pun of a book, "The Beginning of the End" contains her approach. I think it was Steph who said to work the samples in the first chapter, without necessarily reading everything in the book. I did in fact do that and gained a great deal. But when IOLI Convention came around in 2002 and Ulrike was going to teach "The Beginning of the End" (a 30 hour class, come early and stay late, then take your homework with you!) I jumped at the chance. I almost totally skipped Torchon and most of Beds because I had a terrible time with lumpy finishing. It drove me to distraction. So I just moved on to finer laces where it is a lot easier to hide ends because the holes are not nearly as large. So, now, after savoring a lot of different laces, I am actually enjoying the parts I left behind. Meanwhile, back at the Binche (a terrible pun, but I am unrepentant) There are several parts to the system that Ulrike proposes. 1. Start with continuous pairs, which has been discussed here. If you start with a loop and finish there, then there are only 2 ends instead of 4 - a 50 per cent improvement already. 2. The easiest place to hide endings is behind cloth or dense parts like tallies or even plaits. So how do you get your finish in the middle of the denser parts of the lace? The answer is to start in the middle of the denser parts. This is the point that the samples in chapter 1 demonstrate in profusion. If you start at the edge, exposed as it is, that's where you are going to finish. The samples in chapter 1 are just little tapes with various kinds of edges. The whole point is how to analyze the work to make sure that the finish is hidden and clean. The prime directive is to start the weaver in the middle of the passives so that the first row is only a partial row. Then the last row will also be a partial row and the end of the weaver will subtly join the beginning loop with the knot behind the screen of cloth stitch. 3. When making the actual join, don't pull up a loop like a sewing. This creates 2 extra thicknesses of thread plus the knot. Ulrike's method is to lengthen the left bobbin (whose next move is to go under), cut off a long end and simply pull the end up through it's beginning loop. Tie a square knot with it's mate. 4. The trickiest part of Ulrike's system is rearranging the paths of the pairs which she calls "detours". The basic idea being that just because the normal path of a pair will end it in some exposed place doesn't mean that you can't re-engineer it to finish somewhere else that will allow a clean end. To this end, some pairs in the ground are made to go uphill and finish at a spider or tally or even behind a unit of roseground. So the beginning determines the end. In Torchon ground, as you approach the ending, the beginning of the ground would have been started by simply looping 2 pairs around a pin with the correct number of twists. When a pair reaches a beginning loop, instead of just ending, you take a sewing and work uphill to a denser part of the pattern, like a trail or a spider or a tally where you can end invisibly. Sometimes the start is the last half of a spider or begins at the woven part of the spider so the ending pairs will come in as the legs, joing the body and hide the ends behind the body. Since spiders and snowballs are everywhere in Binche, I am quite used to using this technique. In class with Ulrike, we analyzed a lot of prickings for Binche, Point Ground, Flanders, etc. for a workable solution. Not every good solution is the same as everyone else's, but a good solution is one that 1. actually works and 2. is invisible. Deciding where to start in Binche was an interesting proposition. A couple of times we analyzed a pricking and then turned it upside down and analyzed it again! I wholeheartedly recommed the technique. Even if you only incorporate a few of the points into your work, I think you will be much more satisfied with your work. Patty - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
