You Asked for my Design Process

Everyone has their own ways of finding inspiration for designs and following it through to a finished piece of lace, this odd way has worked well for me on occasion. 

Insomnia plays a part.  To stop my mind being restless at night when sleep isn't an option, I  give it something to do.  I send myself off on a favourite walk, taking in the details of trees and flowers in the hedgerows, or have a wander around a town I haven't seen for years, or listen to the waves of a long ago seaside visit, smelling the sea, and feeling the heat of a long gone sun on my shoulders.  

Pain ups the game.  Sometimes more concentration is called for, so I turn to figuring out the construction of a dream house, or how to best cut fabric for a new patchwork quilt and the order of sewing,  or how to make a new shape of pincushion.

When it is obvious I am in for a long, unsleeping night, I have to give my imagination a longer project to chew on.  Lacemaking is good option because of all the different aspects of a new design.  Sometimes I get the completed design nearly straight away, maybe I had been thinking about one and I just needed brain space to visualise the finished lace

I flash up a drawing, a shape, and pull and push it about as though I have a pencil and paper.  I fill it with lace, what edge does it have?  The edge depends on the filling, so what filling suits the shape?  

It looks like a fish, so needs a smooth edge, a two pair will do nicely and  'festoon' would make lovely scale shapes, but I need a bigger body to give that stitch enough room, it will have to be more of a cartoon fish than a realistic shape then.  Maybe I could attach some sequins inside each of the scales or just add tiny seed beads along where the picots should sit?  Let's see if that is possible. 

Ping! Now I am using pale bobbins, not sure why, just the ones I tend to go for at night, though I don't have a set of pale bobbins in awake time! Handy to not have to wind them each time though, and always the right colours just where I need them.

I don't seem to need a pillow or pins with unasleep lace making. I can flip the piece over or rub out a section that didn't work, add a new bit and carry on.  The crochet hook sewings never snags the thread, bobbins stay in order unsecured,  but I still have to make sure that each bobbin has the same length thread, I do like them neat!

I abandoned festoon, I think Honeycomb would suit better and I do like making it because it has a gentle dance when being worked.  Let's see if the sequins will fit inside the centers... the threads and sequin work themselves up in the air, a bit like 3D 'Fantasia', having a few tries till it all slips nicely into place and the sequin is tensioned in the center, I will have to remember how I did that when it comes time to make it for real.

The finished fishes are all over the place, colours, sequins, beads, I made some of them longer, some rounder, give them different tails, wonder what they would look like if I embroidered them instead, would they translate into applique?   

What if I used just one body shape and used differenent laces to fill them?  A practice piece to see how fillings can alter the look of one simple shape?  I draw a curve, mirror it and there is the body, a few different tails, little fins added on and now to try different fillings... 

Ping! there they are, a bit of sequin ground, a bit of tape lace with beads and shiny thread, a few tallies of course, stubby tail, long tail, and big sequin eyes on blue, pink and gold fish.  I drew them for real the following morning and put a few of them in the computer for printing onto blue card.

Of course, this is 'just' the design idea, the making of an actual pattern and making all the real lace pieces is a much more laborious task and I will detail that process at another time. 

'Foggy' takes his first wobbly steps.

First wobbly steps of little Forget-me-not, or 'Foggy' for short.  This design will be remade and filled out with a fuller roseground on his face, a bit more of a tummy, some shape defining grey gimps and a longer trunk as he grows up.  Still wearing his pajama trousers, he explored the garden and took a liking to the tiny 'Forget Me Not' flowers in the garden, and so his name was chosen. 

The process of making the first version of a new pattern is often full of relief that some bits worked better than I thought, and also of frustration when the pins are removed much further down the pattern, to find that some parts had not gone as planned.  I made the roseground too large and Foggy's eyes are too high so that will be corrected on the next working.  

Unusually for me, I made this little chap in sections.  I am not a fan of sewings, but the more I do, the less they bother me.  The sectional way of making larger pieces of lace means there are fewer bobbins needed at a time, maybe 25 pairs instead of 125 pairs!

I am trying to decide if this little chap is a possibility for the 'Bobbin Lace Along' facebook group where we have a live pillow and members often work the same pattern with the experienced members helping those who need it.  

 

Asymmetrical Spider - pattern and workings.

I remade this Torchon style spider bookmark which I designed early on in my bobbin lace making journey and found that I still enjoyed a bit of Torchon after neglecting it for a few years in favour of Bedfordshire and Cluny type laces.

This little pattern uses asymmetrical blocks in different sizes.  Each block can have any treatment, I used rose ground in one of the blocks and a single rose in one of the smaller blocks.  This could easily have been worked by using the blocks just as samples of grounds in place of spiders.  

I wasn't happy with the points on the outside, but as I hadn't been making lace for long, and there were no instructions because I had just joined lots of spider squares together rather than using an existing pattern, I made it the best way I knew how at the time.

This second one turned out better.  Then I enlarged the pattern to make it with a thicker crochet 20 thread during a lace zoom on a live pillow.  Plenty of spiders to choose from so each bookmark is different.  

The edge involves carrying pairs as the sides zig zag in and out,but this doesn't affect the number of pairs throughout the whole length of the bookmark.  Using 6 pairs of passives to allow for three pairs down each side, the total number of pairs is 19 depending on what thickness of fancy thread you choose for the passives, and which edge stitch you choose.  

You can use any 'start at a point' you like, there are many to choose from.

I did it this way.  Hang 2 pairs of workers open and twist one side twice.

Place a temp pin below the top pin and hang 6 pairs open. These are the passives. 

Work one pair of workers through one side of the passives.  Repeat on other side. 

In the centre, cloth stitch and twist the two worker pairs under the temp pin in the middle.  Work back to the outside edges on both sides. Work the outside pin on each side.

Work back to the first proper inside pin with both workers, here you can cross the two worker pairs around the pin, or use the same pin twice.    Continue to work down the sides, adding the pairs needed for the first spider.  The temp pin can be left in place. 

The outside points do take a bit of work to keep the passives tucked up to the very corner of the point as they want to gravitate to the inside pin when tensioned, so I used a Honiton technique where, after working the pin, I made a single overhand knot after the first, and sometimes after the second pairs of passives too.  These knots help to restrain the passives  to the point when tensioning further down the sides. 

When the edges turn centerward, the passives from the spider legs have no pin to go to, they get worked alongside the passives for a short distance till you need them again.  This makes the passive trail a bit thicker around the inside bends but they snuggle up and soon go back into the pattern. 

Working the final edge trails on the last big spider, the legs get taken into the passive trail.  There are too many to carry without a strange, thick edge being made so it's time to throw some pairs out.  

When you have 5 pairs of passives in the trail, choose two alternate bobbins, not side by side ones, and lift them up and away from your work. So this on both sides. Don't cut them off yet.

To choose the right pair, use threads away from the edge where you are taking spider legs into the trail. Don't choose the very outside thread.

Lift your chosen bobbin and look underneath the thread, if you see the worker going sideways underneath, pick the next bobbin to it, look underneath and you will notice that it lifts the worker lying on top of it, this is the thread to throw out.  Pick the next alternate thread and both will have the worker going over the top.

When you get to where the final trails meet, divide the threads into two sides, choose a worker bobbin from each side and tie a knot.  Lift the bobbin bundle from each side in turn , (there is no need to keep these bobbins in any order so just grab them) and pass a worker around a bundle and lay back in the center, repeat on other side.  Tie a knot in the workers. 

Now the fun bit...

*Lift the left worker and pass around the right bundle, lift the right worker and pass around the left bundle, cross the two workers in the middle*.  Repeat from*to * for however long you want the double whipping to be. Tension and push up the workers every few turns.    Knot the workers at the centre to end it.  

Thread both workers onto a sewing needle and sew from above the knot, through the middle of a bundle.  This will anchor the worker threads and stop them sticking out from the knot.  Cut the free threads of the tail to desired length.

There will be a video on my Youtube channel on choosing threads for throwing outs, the start at a point, and the two sided whipped tail. 

See 'Files' tab in  Lesley's Lace Group on FB to download the .pdf