Monday 17 February 2020

Amy Atkin project - needle run lace


As you can see I’m getting on well with my Amy Atkin lace project. This is the first panel and I’ve almost completed it. The design is mine, based on motifs taken from Amy Atkin’s designs housed in the Collection of the Nottingham City Museums. I’m using needle run lace on machine made net. This is an old technique originally used in the nineteenth century before the invention of lace machines that could produce patterned lace. At that time all patterning had to be added to plain machine made net manually by young women called ‘lace runners’ using needles for embroidery, small hooks for fine chain stitching, or fine sewing for adding material in an applique technique. I’m using needle running in a more fluid modern way to outline my design and produce some areas of shading. Of course, Amy Atkin’s designs would have been produced on modern Levers lace machines that would have produced the net and pattern at the same time, but needle running is the closest I can get to a traditional lace technique working from my studio
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