Archives for the ‘Chantilly’ Category
And still more retrolacing….
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
I’m kicking myself for being so stingy about wasting thread. Now that I’m getting to the end of A26, I’m worried that I’m going to run out and have to lay in new pairs for the last inch, completely defeating the purpose of skimping on thread in the first place. I totally underestimated how much gimp I’d need, so I’m having to replace both gimp pairs. Not that big a deal, really, but an avoidable pain in the neck. Of course, that may have saved me from later pulling out the pins and finding a glaring error in the gimp path. I had already replaced one gimp pair, worked the pinchain wheel motif, and started to replace the other gimp pair when I noticed that one of the short gimps wasn’t where I expected it to be, meaning that I’d failed to cross the gimps at some point. Sure enough, back at the top of the pinchain wheel on the left was a missing twist that should be between the top and second pinholes between the gimps in the pictures below. Okay, it’s not that far back. But there’s nothing like making life harder than it needs to be to dampen one’s enthusiasm.
Uh-oh! Where’s the pinhole that’s supposed to be here?
Saturday, 24 January 2009
A day to myself to make lace. My husband’s gone off to BarCampCLT, so it’s just me and the kitties and my lace. Yes!
I poured a cup of coffee, went up to my studio, and started to work. I finished the second floral motif, breezed through the little cone shape, and started in on the third repetition of the pinchain wheel. But wait. There’s a pinhole on the pricking but it’s missing on the diagram. That’s not all—there are only two pinholes at the bottom of the wheel in my pricking when the diagram shows three. Why didn’t I notice that before?
Notes to self:
- If you’re going to make changes to a diagram, make sure all said changes are pasted on in the same orientation. I pasted on two pinchain wheel additions, one of which was upside down. The lack of a pinhole in the original diagram was now in two different locations on my diagram.
- Check the diagram and the pricking to ensure there are no differences between the two in the first place.
- When altering the pricking, do not create and use a mirror image of the section with the difference (two pinholes as opposed to three), thereby doubling its presence in your pricking. This is what I did.
So I put in the missing pinholes at the bottom of all subsequent pinchain wheels, but I don’t think it’s going to be very noticeable. After taking out some pins, this is what it looks like.
You can clearly see three pinholes at the top of the wheel just to the right and left of the vertical pinchain. At the bottom in the same location, there are only two. It’s not a glaring error, but adding in the two pinholes to make it symmetric with top I think will improve it. What is very obvious looking at this picture is the fact that I did not cover the pin at the end of the pinchain at the bottom of the wheel. This instance is pretty far back, but after checking the lace, it’s a repeating theme. Guess I’ll be practicing my retrolacing skills. Arrrggg!
The Picots Worked!
Saturday, 10 January 2009
After altering the pricking in Photoshop to reflect the addition of the pinchain wheels and their picots but keeping it the same size as in the book, I was ready to start. As with my other Chantilly pieces, I used Pipers 4/20 silk with 140/2 silk for the gimp. The first motif to work was the pinchain wheel with picots, and everything worked fine. I won’t know how it looks until I can take some of the pins out because right now it’s a dense forest of pins. But so far, so good.
U1: Finally Finished
Saturday, 3 January 2009
After a busy period when I needed the portability of needlelace, I’m back at my lace pillow making Chantilly. U1 (from Ulrike Voelcker’s Grammar of Point Ground) is finally done. Here I’m applying the starching agent which happens to be liquid hairspray. I brush it on lightly, trying to avoid buildup that would cause the dried hairspray to collect in the holes of the lace like glass in a window pane. One application is probably enough, but I put on two.
The finished lace is 9-1/4 inches/23.5 cm long and took me an estimated 56 hours, about 50 hours for the actual lacemaking and about 6 for the set up (bobbin winding, preparing the pricking) and finishing (tieing and cutting off threads, taking out pins, starching). I’m a pretty slow lacemaker, but I’m probably underestimating the setup and finishing times.
Here’s a scan of the finished lace.
Chantilly Workshop with Ulrike Voelcker
Sunday, 17 August 2008
I’m back from the three-day Chantilly workshop with Ulrike Voelcker. On July 19, I started my practice piece for this workshop with a copy of Ulrike’s new technique book, The Grammar of Point Ground, in hand. Here’s what it looked like with the ground just started.
