Category: lace

Needle lace… What’s that?

DW5 Comments

To continue my slightly odd obsession with lace making for another post, recently I looked up lace making courses in my area. I’m not sure why, as I’ve mentioned previously, lace making with bobbins isn’t something I think I have the time (or space) to do. Really I think I was just wondering what kind of things were available locally. I’m often quite mean about the town I live in – and to be honest, it’s no where near as bad as all that. We have wide open green spaces, and that’s one of the things I like about it most.

snowy spaces

Anyway. To my surprise I found a lace making course near me. You could learn three types of lace, needle lace, bobbin lace and knitted lace. I can’t knit and it’s not something I’m looking to learn at the moment – but I was curious about needle lace. What is it? Is it tatted lace, but with a needle?

On further investigation, (also known as asking my mother) I found a book on needle lace. It looked like a 1970s horror. A cross between embroidery, and… I’m not even sure what else, odd miniature weaving or something. Which confirmed it. It wasn’t something I wanted to do.

But I’m very nosey at times, and further investigation online lead me to this page: Antique needlepoint lace, from the collection of Marla Mallett.

That’s more what I was expecting! That’s not a 1970s nightmare, it’s intricate and beautiful. There’s also a lot of different types of needle lace it seems.

Incase you’re interested, this is my favourite.

Reticello Needle Lace Border

It’s called Reticello. (Or Reticella – is one plural? My Italian is non existent). It is, I think, a cross between cut and drawn threadwork. Initial investigations haven’t got me very far (but then I’ve not had a huge amount of time to look).

The odd thing is, I came across a blog the other day, quite by accident where someone is teaching herself. It looks great! Mica, I am most impressed. I’ve put further investigations on hold at the moment as I’ve got a lot of other stuff I should be doing, but I’ll see what else I can find out in the new year.

UPDATE: Incase anyone doesn’t read the comments, there’s a needlelace tutorial here!

Christmas tatting

DW6 Comments

After making lots of odds and ends of tatting this year, while I practised things like split rings and mock rings, xmas has given me the excuse to finally make a few things from start to finish. Tatting is easy to slip in an envelope with a card, and snowflake patterns exist in abundance. They can be used as ornaments for the tree, or to hang up with the xmas cards (or something… I hope).

Anyway. I did have plans to make a few different styles, but sadly work has been too busy to remember to print out any other patterns. At the end of each day I keep realising I’ve worked though lunch and completely forgotten. On the plus side, as I tatt on the train, making the same pattern each time means you remember it easily and don’t need to keep digging in your bag for what to do next. I’ve been making this pattern, ‘Quantiesque‘ by Jon, a prolific tatter based in Malaysia.

The first one I made was in dark red. I got the threads from the Stiching/Knitting show at Alexandra Palace (London), but they only had a limited range of colours. Originally I’d planned to make the inner rings in dark red and the outer in lighter red, but the more I tatted, the more I decided that would actually look crap with the colours I had available. This is the dark red one unblocked:

unblocked tatted snowflake

and this is it’s companion, the light red one, blocked:

Red tatted snowflake

After this, I ended up with too much thread left on my shuttle – which tatters will appreciate is *really* annoying,  so I tried to pay attention to how much thread I was using a bit more closely. Too closely in fact. I wound on too little and so made a 5 point version of the snowflake instead 🙂

The colour of this is really odd. If you get it in exactly the right light, it’s really pretty. A lovely, icey, delicate blue. If you look at it in the wrong light it looks like it’s meant to be white and has got really dirty. Aside from that, the lighter colour makes the centre stand out more, making it look more 3d. I’m now in the middle of making one in an ecru thread, which is looking like it should be nice. The thread for all of these is a DMC perlé, size 12.

While at the same show I also picked up a DMC size 80. I like the thickness (or thinness), but it does have a habit of twisting back on itself:

This is a first go at a Mary Konior pattern, and the smaller rings were often tricky to close, as the thread kept twisting. Got there in the end – it’s not the neatest tatting, (and it’s not been blocked), but it’s ok. I’ll remake it another time, when my commuting time isn’t full of snowflakes.

The problem with lace

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The fact is, I’m not really a ‘doily’ or ‘lacy’ kind of person. Most of the surfaces in this house are full of books or computer kit, so there’s not really the room to start draping lace artfully across tables or seductively over armchairs.

But, I quite like making lace in various forms. Not your bog standard on-a-lacemaking-cushion lace, with card patterns, pins and ten thousand bobbins, but tatted lace, or as of yesterday, Irish Crocheted Lace. (While I like the look of more standard lace, I’m a huge fan of ‘portable craft’, and bobbin lace never looks that portable.)

I took up tatted lace for a few different reasons

  • I don’t know anyone else who does it and I like to be obtuse
  • I’d recently taken up crochet and was worried I’d get crochet RSI / cramp so thought an alternative ‘thing’ would be sensible – different hand positions etc
  • It’s difficult enough to keep me interested, and easy enough to feel I’m making progress
  • Lots of patterns are repetitive enough to remember off by heart as you go, so you don’t have to keep referring back to the pattern (good when in transit)
  • It’s small – so you can do it on the train (longer story for another time, but I do all my tatting on the train, in the 15 mins I get between getting on and off again).

Here’s an example of my first proper train-made, tatted motif:

Recently, I was given a ball of DMC perle cotton, size 8. Someone I know had some left over and thought it might be good for tatting. Actually, it’s a bit thick, but I bought a 1.25mm crochet hook, and lo and behold, it’s actually pretty good to crochet with – if a wee bit fluffy.

I’m still in the process of experimenting with the threads I like to crochet with – hence the previous post on monkey making. But now seemed like a good time to try Irish Crochet, or as it’s often called, Irish Crocheted Lace.

As it goes, I quite like crocheting at this size – it’s not as hard as you think. The size of the hook corresponds with the size of the thread, so in some ways  it doesn’t feel more fiddly, as it’s all in proportion.

Irish Crochet

I quite like the look of it. It’s often described as ‘three dimensional’ because the flowers are raised from the background. This is actually from a free pin cushion pattern, and anyone who is really bothered will spot that I’ve gone a bit wrong. I was watching ’24’ at the same time and dreaming of being a secret agent, which distracted me a bit. It’s not a disaster though, but I might make a round pin cushion, rather  than a square one. (I’ve also noticed a lot of other people have made the same mistake – the pattern isn’t *that* clear at times. You’d only spot the mistake if you read the pattern).

So pretty soon I’ll have a lace pincushion.. You know,to go with my tatted lace motifs I’ve been making on the train. And now I quite fancy having a go at some more Irish crochet, so who knows, I could make, a… doily? Or a slightly worrying see-through dress… (There’s a lot of it about. Very popular in Russia, for some reason. Beautiful work – seriously, and a flowery see through dress at the end of it all).

So therein lies the problem with lace. Tatted, crocheted, and lets face it, bobbin lace would have the same problem. More fun to make than a knitted jumper (for me) but you end up with a bunch of stuff you have no idea what to do with at the end of it.

I know I could give it away – I do, but pretty soon I’m going to be that relative you hate getting gifts from at Christmas or birthdays.

Having said all this, there are actually worse things to worry about in the world than what the hell you do with the evil offspring resulting from the marriage of a wet weekend and a crafty hobby.

Lace necklaces…

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I’m a tatter. I tat. I do tatting. It’s nothing like tattooing. I’ll write more about it another time but for now, just think of it like ‘sturdy lace’. With this in mind, when I see lace-like things, I can’t help but use them as inspiration for future tatted projects. (You know, those kind of ‘future projects’ that may or may not come to fruition).

These are some things I’ve spotted recently:

This on Etsy, by eninaj, gold plated silver and leather.

This, by Henderson Dry Goods, laser cut wood

These, by andrea8779, laser cut leather

And finally, this actually IS lace, from cutiemus

All very nice. It’s interesting to see how much laser cutting is going on these days. Paper cutting seems to’ve boomed in popularity, and I’ve just spotted a few laser-cut-paper-cuts over on etsy. More on that another time.