Up to now I have been placing lace or vintage trim in the seams of my veil piece as I join newly hand embroidered sections. In this image, where three pieces meet I have added beading instead. I had a need for the repetitive. I'm so glad I did.
(Alchemy girls, your first critique videos are now live on the class blog)
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These images show some of the stages I go through when creating my lace 'veil' like pieces.
First of all I create the lace cloth, in this instance with snippets of silk velvet too.
Those little silk velevt 'islands' are then edged with buttonhole lace before sequins are added.
I will occasionally cut holes in the lace cloth too and edge those with buttonhole lace. That results in an even lighter piece of cloth.
Once I have several pieces embellished I then join them. Sometimes I place lace in the seams or a vintage trim, sometimes self made cords.
As you have probably noticed I'm also partial to stitching shiny things into notebooks too!
This morning has been about lace cloth. More pieces have been created on the sewing machine using silk velvet for my ongoing piece from lace class and the final titivations have been added to a brighter, more colourful piece which was created using patterned fabric.
August 2020 Lace cloth, the class which has just finished is now listed as a work on your own class. You can read about that here.
Included is access to thirty four videos which you can view at your liesure.
Today is a day for reacquainting myself with lace and all things lace class.
It's good to be back working on these pieces and making plans for more and more embellishment.
Another piece from lace class which is very different to the piece I showed you last time.
That piece was created purely with lace cloth and embroidery, the piece today is a mix of lace cloth, paper and silk habotai.
This one is partially worked and will evolve as class progresses. The edges in particular are what I'm thinking about today. I can't quite decide what to do with those.
It's not that I don't have any ideas, if anything I have too many.
Decisions, decisions....
This piece from lace class is almost finished......yay!
More embellishment is needed on the lower layer, it requires finishing at the edges but the very time consuming stuff, the edging of holes and cut lace applique is done.
When I say time consuming I mean time consuming. The girls in class will vouch for that I'm sure.
I never usually have an issue with time consuming, I actually mostly embrace it but we're talking deadlines here, class deadlines.
I never embrace a deadline.
Before I start I should say to my Lace class I am not giving anything away with these images. You will understand tomorrow.
There is so much going on here at the moment, family stuff, house stuff.....it feels like someone has got a whisk on full speed in my brain.
Regardless....I am taking some time to play with ideas for lace cloth.
An old artist book page and some self made lacy stuff.
It's just a ten minute 'look see', 'try', 'play'.
As promised, a little glimpse for you of what I am doing when I'm not playing with stitched artist books.
This is my work for lace class. It's early days, we have only been going just over a week.
There's a lot of stitching and 'lace' creation still to do, hence my avoidance of artist books for at least a couple of days.
I hope you like what I've done up to now.
This morning I've been taking a little time to play around with placement, composition using little fragments of lace cloth.
Very often it's not the lace cloth which makes a piece.....it's what you do with it that's important.
I first used overlays which had been created with my own, self made 'lace cloth' to protect pages within my hand made artist books. I then played with them as an added layer over richly embroidered surfaces.
Now I'm wondering if perhaps an overlay needs a protective overlay of its own?
My thinking is, depending on the delicacy of the embroidered lace cloth overlay would it not only be protected by another lace cloth layer but also enhanced?
A little sampling has been happening with that in mind before my lace cloth class begins next week. These are the types of processes and directions I am hoping to explore during those eight weeks, not only the creation of lace cloth but how it can be used to enhance other embroidered works.
I spent the last few days in London. It was very, very strange, quiet, almost empty. The underground, the subway was mostly deserted as were the streets.
When will we ever get back to normal? I am finding it all quite unsettling, more so now than in the beginning.
Please keep safe everyone. There will be an end to this if we all just hang in together.