Wednesday 31 January 2018

Lace net embroidery

I’ve been looking through my Weldons encyclopaedia of needlework at the section on embroidering on net to produce lace. It gives some lovely filling stitches and a great variety of them. One of the other things I like about this book is that it also gives examples of antique lace for all the techniques. I realise that during my recent foray into net embroidery for my Battle of Britain lace panel I have broken most of the rules! For example it says that you should use only the best quality net and the way to measure that is by inserting a stiletto (like the ones used for broderie anglaise) through a mesh, if it stretches without breaking it’s a good quality. I deliberately chose a net that didn’t stretch at all and was as rigid as possible. However, I did use a blunt needle and a long thread for working as recommended. Luckily I didn’t tear my net, or cut through it while I was using a Carrickmacross technique, but had I done so, Weldons has step by step instructions for repairing a hole in net, which looks very effective and the result blends in beautifully with the surrounding net – I suspect that kind of result takes years to perfect though! 


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