Nancy I think Alex's answer is a good one. Start with torchon or tape lace, as both are easier to design for. With torchon, making a copy of a graphed pattern onto different sized graph paper is good, and then drawing in all the lines showing where the threads came from to make each pin, and where they go afterwards. Then making adaptations of existing patterns, and designing corners for laces that don't have corners. Or making a pricking from a piece of actual torchon lace. Try these first with very simple patterns, then some more complicated ones. All this is not yet designing your own work, so I would not publish any of the results, but you can then try to make laces from your resulting patterns to see if they work. Then take a pattern with something not quite right in its proportions and try to improve it.
And constantly ask yourself, with each effort, how can I make this more beautiful? Can I change the shape of the fan, use more or less ground, change the spacing to make it better. In the process of doing this you will understand how to design, and you won't need other people's designs as a starting point. If you have done tape lace, that is also easy to design for. But you must first understand all the manoevers typically used in that form so you understand how to connect the parts. Then you can just draw squiggles on a page, turn them into narrow, constant width meandering paths, and connect the parts of the path by braids or sewings. Or you can take the outline of an animal or object in the real world, make the outline into a narrow tape, and fill the center with some ground. The more you try, the better you'll get. I keep a pad of graph paper, some plain paper, and a bunch of pencils, erasers and pens next to my rocking chair. During commercials or dull parts in tv programs I think up designs. Some are really good almost the instant them come off the pencil. Some need a lot of work and fixing. I've got a few dozen in various folders, waiting for samples. A few approach spectacular, many are merely OK and good enough. If you want to try it, just start. Lorelei - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]
