"Do you prefer to do a straight edge lace ..... or do you prefer a pricking that is square with sewing at the end?"
I prefer the neater look of a worked corner, and the interest of doing the corner as a change from the straight. "and attach it to a handkerchief blank" If you literally mean ready made 'blank', never. Even if I was making a straight edge to gather at the corners, still never. They are very rarely square, very rarely on the true grain of the fabric, never made from a top quality, light-enough weight fabric and the stitching is too heavy. Add to that they are an expensive way of buying the fabric, and you have to take what size they are offered in. I use fine quality linen and cotton fabric, a lot of which I have bought in Spain. My reason for this is that they have fabric which is both light in weight but not densely woven. These days the fine cotton lawn available in the UK is very closely woven making it extremely difficult to pull threads for straight grain, or to be able to see how many threads you are working over. The Spanish cotton and linen fabric has a little space between each thread so it is possible to sew accurately. The fabric looks much the same as the cloth stitch areas of the lace "Do you prefer linen or cotton?" No preference, but a lot of my students don't like linen (to make the lace with) because of the slight unevenesses in the thread. "Can the fibers be mixed, as a silk edging on a linen handkerchief?" I would put cotton lace on a linen fabric, or vice versa, IF that was the only way I could get the right colour/weight of fabric for the lace I was making, but I doubt I would use silk for a lace hanky at all, or mount it on cotton or linen. I always pre-shrink my fabric and my lace. It would partly depend on what the handkerchief was being made for. If it was a one-off super-duper wedding hanky, and it was to match a silk wedding dress, then maybe I'd make the silk lace, but why then not mount it on silk and know the after care is for all-silk. I personally would feel more confident about the long term afterlife of an heirloom made in cotton or linen as you don't know that future owners will take care of it properly. Even without archival storage, cotton and linen stand a good chance of being around in a hundred years or more, as evidenced by the big box of Victorian clothes we found in Mum's workroom, stored in a brown cardboard ex-supermarket box, with not a trace of acid-free wrapping, and still as white as when it was last boiled. If you have done mainly Torchon, you might find some of the Claire Burkhard patterns of interest. Many are basically Torchon but with an interesting twist . Her 50 New Bobbin Lace Patterns has two or three hankies in, as well as lots of other interesting pieces. Another book which you might find interesting is Dentelle de Mirecourt, which has some not quite Torchon patterns, but very pretty, with excellent diagrams as well so it doesn't matter if you can't read French. There is a good chance that the first of these books is in the IOLI library, if not both of them. btw, I love your spinning showing on the July blog entry. Jacquie in Lincolnshire - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachnemodera...@yahoo.com
