Carrickmacross lace

The next stage of my Battle of Britain lace panel requires some Carrickmacross lace so I’ve been reminding myself how to do it. The last time I made any Carrickmacross lace was a while ago when I made this cape inspired by peacock feathers. Basically the technique is to lay a piece of fabric on to the net, then outline the shape you want with a thickish thread without cutting out the material. Then you couch the thread down using a fine thread and finally cut away the excess material to leave the shape you want outlined in a thicker thread. The secret is not to cut into the net as you remove the excess fabric round the edge of your design or to cut the outlining thread, so precision is required! As you can see, for the cape I used several layers of chiffon to make the peacock eyes so the technique was quite complicated. This time I’m just using one layer of fabric with an outlining couching thread so it should be simpler, however the net I’m sewing on to this time is firmer and has less give than the gold mesh I used for the cape. I’ll need to try a few different types of fabric on a sample before I work on to my panel to see which one works best with the net.