I was scrolling through my own blog today (as one does) and realized I never did a proper round-up post for Rosemary. So this is a bit of a retrospective I suppose! Click through for my notes on the project if you're interested - otherwise, I hope you like the pictures!
This is certainly one of my favorite pieces that I've done. I think it really turned out beautifully! But, it also stands out in my mind for having a foul, foul, truly foul number of broken threads that had to be replaced in the middle of the work. I think at least 6? The ideal number of course being zero. At the time, this sucked. I had no idea what I was doing - you can see in one of the pictures that I was referencing three different books at one point trying to figure out how the heck to fix the dang things. But in hindsight, it was valuable experience! I got a lot of practice splicing in new threads, and I also stopped being so afraid of it happening. (Though of course one still likes to avoid it...)
I am not sure why so many threads decided to part company with their fellows, but I have some theories. I'm fairly sure it's not because of putting too much tension on the thread, because it didn't snap under pressure so much as just kinda fray and drift apart. My prime suspect is the bobbins - something about this style of bobbin makes it really hard (for me, at least) to prevent them rolling wildly all over the pillow during the work, which runs the risk of untwisting the thread. This is very sad for me because I love these bobbins. But I haven't given up hope that I can still make them work. They seem to roll less on my box pillow, so maybe they can just be reserved for that pillow. Also, I'm on that "it was a bad batch of thread" copium 😅
This was also the first time I tried mounting the finished lace onto fabric, which I was very worried about screwing up but it wound up not being so bad! Sewing is definitely not my strong suit, but I got through it and am pleased with the result.
Technical Notes
Pattern: "Rosemary" from A Visual Introduction to Bucks Point Lace by Geraldine Stott
Thread: Egyptian cotton 80/2 in bright white
Gimps: 8 ply of the base thread
Pins: .5 mm pins for the picots and motifs; .8mm pins for the ground and footside
Picots: 5 twists
Started: September 14, 2020
Completed: August 11, 2021
(If you've made it this far and you somehow haven't heard enough about this project, you can check out the "rosemary" tag on my blog to see my other posts about it.)
I don't understand how lace is made, but looking at the bobbins and pins and patterns … listen buddy I know math when I see it. This is A Math Thing. Obviously.
Right away I want to know:
Can I encode information in lace?
How much of an expert must one be to make your own patterns?
What about the creation of surfaces?
Knitting is more accessible, and people have been exploring math with knitting forever.
But what possibilities does lace offer?
What is the theory of lace?
An excerpt from Mathematics Magazine
Vol. 91, No. 4 (October 2018), pp. 307-309
Shows I'm hardly the first person to muse about this. Need to get my hands on the rest of this article, obviously.
PSA for all the people who have a pet Fibre Artist, whether you have a Knitter, a Crocheter or perhaps one of the more rare breeds like Spinners and Lace-Makers, make sure that they take frequent breaks from their craft by playing with them and taking them on walks since Fibre Artists are prone to giving themselves RSIs and Carpal Tunnel when left to their own devices for too long!
can I ask (if you know) what style of bobbin lace your neglected project is?
Hi!
My neglected lace is called pizzo di Cantù, One of the regional laces in Italy.
Here, bobbin lace mostly constitutes in waving ribbons (fettuccia), joined by little braids and torchons (bacchetta). If you want to try some patterns look for the "Mani di fata" magazine, It has many publications about it
Other two Italian laces that I know are the Neapolitan one, for which I recommend this book
And the San Sepolcro lace, a bit more similar to othe European bobbin laces, here is an example of the bachino motif, traditionally used for weddings
For the San Sepolcro lace, you can check the M&F merletti site, Maria Elena, the owner, is a dear friend and a great teacher.
If you were by any chance wondering how was my bobbining and lacing going, let me tell you, I was suffering.
In my classes, we started making leaves (not sure of the correct English terminology) and let me tell you, just as in the nature not a single two leaves are identical.
This heart we made screams: It's 2003, I am 12, listening to Avril Lavigne and feeling absolutely badass
(all mistakes were therefore intentional and a design choice. Also I forgot to take a pic of the heart unpinned)
Aditionally, as out goverment decided to be a little bit silly (read: it's a nightmare) and claiming the stuff like our culture is being destroyed by the evil western influences, my only reaction was of course deciding I need to make the absolutely most depraved filthiest thing with our beloved traditional craft
(I didn't draw them myself as I am not that good, i digged from archives on lacedesign.cz some pictures, smashed them together, replaced one head and edited the colours of the original pictures so it is useable as a template. I did it in MS Word, don't ask)
I am far unskilled for this. I am guessing how to proceed and I am afraid there will be a monstrosity when I unpin it. Truly desecrating the culture I guess. (I know the og designer was Czech not Slovak, just to add an extra layer of fun)
Anyway, this is the first lady in progress
(actually I have already made a little bit of the skirt now but also forgot to take a picture and I don't want to wait until I come back home)
Maybe I don't know what I am doing but it allows me to be spiteful, so it's fun
You know how, for a long time we didn't know nålebinding existed and people thought that those red socks were knitted and it turned out they weren't, they were made by nålebinding, you just had to know very specific details to tell which craft they were made by?
(these socks:)
I know a little bit about a lot of different fiber arts. I know: knitting, crochet, spinning, tatting, bobbin lace, needle lace, embroidery, and a little nålebinding.
Inspired by these socks, I want to create the most archaeologically confounding frankendoily out of all my crafts, and then I want to immediately commit it to a bog, for preservation. A tatted motif at the center, with a bobbin lace round around it. Maybe there's a knitted border with a crochet edge. Some needle lace motifs hanging around, but like, I'm gonna mix Romanian point lace with Battenberg styles. Something's getting embroidered somewhere. Idk.
And I'm gonna make the whole thing out of the most historically generic white cotton thread I can find, something that could maybe have been used hundreds of years ago so you can't tell when the frankendoily was made. Maybe I'll even make it over different decades of my life. Also I'm left handed, but I can do most things right handed too, and some of the crafts look slightly different depending on which hand you used as your dominant hand.
And then the whole thing is going in a bog, because bogs are really specifically good at preserving cloth, and I will go quietly into the void at the end of my life, knowing I leave behind me a very specific kind of chaos and confusion for some very specific future kindred soul.
If anyone has any additional crafts I should learn for the frankendoily, I'm all ears.