A few books with good beginner needlelace instructions:
"Needlelace" by Pat Earnshaw, in the Merehurst Embroidery Skills series.
"Outlines and Stitches: A Guide to Design" by Pat Earnshaw
"Needle Lace: Techniques & Inspiration" by Jull Nordfors Clark
"The Art of Lacemaking" by Ann Collier
The Earnshaw "Needlelace" book has basic instructions and lots of pages
showing different stitches and their uses, with both modern and
traditional designs.
Her "Outlines and Stitches" book gives good instructions for standard
needle lace, and also has information on designing and on Halas Needle
Lace (a Hungarian lace established in the early 1900s). The only
problem I have with recommending this book for general beginner needle
lace technique is that absolute beginners may not understand which
techniques are generally used and which are rarely found outside Halas
lace; that may be confusing.
Nordfors-Clark is more modern-design-oriented, and includes other
embroidery techniques, chosen for the effect they achieve. Inspiring,
but not a good book for people wanting to replicate old styles.
Collier's book has a series of small projects, each one demonstrating a
different kind of lacemaking (including techniques like Irish Crochet
and cutwork); I like this one because of the variety but if you just
want information on needle lace you might find that frustrating.
All of these books are out of print, but I looked them up on
www.abebooks.com and found used copies for sale in both the UK and the
USA for reasonable prices - in the $20 to $40 range. (Of course, the
seller in Hialeah, Florida, who wants $500 for "Outlines and Stitches"
either made a typo or is insane ;-)
Adele
North Vancouver, BC
(on the cold & cloudy west coast of Canada)
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